ATLANTA — Get ready for another Cicada invasion.
The noisy, alien-looking bugs are expected to return to the Peach State once again this spring, but this year’s brood is not to be as it was last year.
Brood XIV is expected to emerge starting next month. They last emerged in 2008.
They start to emerge once the soil temperature reaches about 64 degrees.
Three species of cicada that only emerge once every 17 years are gearing up to spring to the surface this year.
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Brood XIV was first discovered by European colonists in the 1600s, who assumed the swarm of insects was akin to a biblical plague before they realized the pattern of emergence, said John Cooley, an entomologist at the University of Connecticut.
Periodical cicadas differ from annual cicadas that emerge every year, the experts said.
Annual cicadas have a green coloring but periodical cicadas are black and orange, Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, an entomologist and associate director at the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University, told ABC News.
In addition, annual cicadas tend to emerge in the “dog days” of summer -- in July and August -- rather than in the spring, Cooley said.
The areas around Georgia that will likely see most of the cicadas include Fannin, Lumpkin, Rabun and Union counties
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