Unless NC was having a drought back then I doubt this years drought will affect them. We've had enough rain to keep most things on schedule and growing.

I kinda like cicadas. the whole mass emergence thing is such a weird thing for an insect to do, so sinchronized, so rehearsed, so organized, from something that doesn't really have a brain.

I drove through them the last time they were going yaya over in the mountains (on one of my frequent cross country drives). It would be nice to see them closer to home.

One of my favorite Mexican folksongs has human singers mimicing the cicada call in the chorus of a love song - lots of loooooong high notes:

Porque la vida se acaba
Y quiero morir cantando
Como muere la cigarra.

La Cigarra (The Cicada)

That recommendation to delay planting fruit trees for a year was something valuable.

Wow, long life for a bug!

Here is a link that might be useful: cicadas

I see that the predicted area affected this year is the part of NC west of the Triad.

Here is a link that might be useful: NCSU cicada info

O.K. I have a question. It mentions as far south as NC and TENN. What makes it stop there? It is a temperature thing or can people in upstate SC expect some cicada activity?

As I understand it - cicadas pretty much stay put. The young (a grub) lives underground and pretty much stays near where it hatched from eggs layed by the mother. So scientist can monitor the grub population by digging them up and determine where the boundaries are. I suppose the range can shrink and swell depending on the food supply but for the most part they know where all of the different populations live.

There are cicadas that live pretty much everywhere and there are many different species so we will have cicadas this summer just like other summers but here in Raleigh I don't think what we will experience is the periodical cicadas that they are talking about.