Kentuckians don't have to worry about an onslaught of noisy cicadas this year, though experts say they're about to emerge in the Northeast. The cicadas, which take 17 years to come out of the ground, are expected to number in the billions along the East Coast from North Carolina to Connecticut. But a chart from the website Magic Cicada dot org indicates Kentucky shouldn't see a cicada emergence until 2021, with others following in 2025 and 2028.
According to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, different broods of cicadas appear every year in the eastern United States. The museum says that in the South, some broods take only 13 years to mature.