Cicadas are back after a 17-year hiatus, and they’re wreaking havoc on the roads.
That’s according to a police agency in Ohio, which responded to a single-vehicle crash that they say was caused by one of the red-eyed insects.
The Cincinnati Police Department tweeted photos of the vehicle with a smashed-in hood on Monday evening (June 7). The driver apparently crashed into a pole at 2600 Riverside Drive because of “a cicada that flew in through an open window striking the driver in the face,” the police department states.
Appropriately, the Cincinnati Police Department hashtagged “Nothing Good Happens With Cicadas.”
Cicadas — known as “Brood X” cicadas — start to emerge when the soil reaches about 64 degrees Fahrenheit, usually around late-April or mid-May, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
“Periodical cicadas make themselves known with their sheer numbers and their constant cricket-like noise, which is the male ’singing’ to attract female cicadas,” said Tom Macy, manager of the ODNR Division of Forestry Forest Health Program. "Cicada chorusing is the loudest natural noise in the world."
So loud, in fact, that a Georgia agency had to urge residents to stop calling 911 to report the “alarms” they heard in their neighborhoods.
Learn more about cicadas from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources here.
Photo: Getty Images