Cicadas’ crescendo alarms S.C. county

Merry Turner thought the noise she heard Tuesday from her home in Newberry County, S.C., was from construction — the low, deep rumble of machinery toiling nearby.

Meanwhile, Lee Foster, the county sheriff, thought it was from yard work — maybe a neighbor attacking weeds bright and early.

But the sound didn’t stop. It grew louder.

It climbed to a crescendo Tuesday — an unceasing alarm reverberating through the county. Soon, residents began calling the sheriff’s office and flagging down deputies.

They needed to know: What was that noise?

It was the rise and mating call of the cicadas, Foster and his deputies told them.

The winged insects that spend most of their lives underground are emerging across the country in the spring or summer to molt into their adult forms, which lead to those infamously loud courtship calls. Their brief lives are spent mating — in a manner so noisy that at least a dozen Newberry County residents called the sheriff’s office in alarm this week.

The cicadas’ din in the South Carolina county is a snapshot of what a swath of the U.S. will experience over several weeks this spring and summer, as billions of cicadas, from two different broods, are emerging at the same time — the first time this has happened since 1803, The Washington Post reported. The cicadas in South Carolina are of the Brood XIX variety, which emerge every 13 years across the Midwest and Southeast.

Turner, a 39-year-old mom who lives in Prosperity, S.C., didn’t think anything of it when she first noticed the roar about three days ago.

Until the cacophony ceases, Turner plans to stay inside and wait out nature. This could mean waiting through June, she said. Her 12-year-old has taken to collecting the insects’ carcasses, while Turner records video of the noise for friends and family — proof that the cicadas’ unending whine is real.