You can’t truly silence cicadas, but you can reduce how much of their noise reaches you. The sound can hit 90 to 100 decibels near a heavily infested tree, roughly as loud as a lawnmower running three feet away. The good news: an adult cicada emergence typically lasts only four to six weeks before the insects die off naturally. Your job is to survive that window with your sanity intact.
Why Cicadas Are So Loud
Only male cicadas produce that deafening chorus, and they do it to attract mates. Each male has a pair of ribbed membranes called tymbals on his abdomen. Large muscles rapidly buckle and unbuckle these ribs in sequence, producing a series of clicks so fast they blur into a continuous buzz. The cicada’s hollow body then amplifies the signal like a resonance chamber, projecting it over long distances. This isn’t a behavior you can train or discourage. It’s hardwired into every adult male, and he’ll keep singing until he mates or dies.
When They’re Loudest
Cicada singing is strongly temperature-dependent. Research on multiple species shows that the rate and intensity of their calls increase as temperatures climb, generally peaking during the warmest parts of the afternoon. Most species go quiet after dark and stay silent on cooler, overcast days. If you need quiet time outdoors, early morning and evening are your best windows. On days that stay below roughly 75°F, the chorus will be noticeably softer or may not start at all.
Spray Trees With a Garden Hose
A strong blast of water from a garden hose will knock cicadas off branches and temporarily scatter them. This won’t kill them or drive them away permanently, but it can buy you 20 to 30 minutes of reduced noise in your immediate area. It works best on a single ornamental tree near a patio or bedroom window rather than on a full yard of mature oaks. You’ll likely need to repeat it, but it’s free, harmless, and immediate.
Use Netting to Keep Them Off Key Trees
If one or two trees near your house are the main source of noise, covering them with mesh netting can physically block cicadas from landing and chorusing there. The mesh holes need to be no larger than half an inch. Standard bird netting, which typically has openings of five-eighths of an inch or wider, won’t work because cicadas can squeeze through. Look for fine garden mesh or insect netting and drape it over the canopy, securing it at the trunk. This is realistic for small or young trees, not a 60-foot oak. Leave the netting in place for the full month of peak activity.
Think About Your Landscaping
Periodical cicadas have strong tree preferences. Research in Appalachian forests found that oak trees (Quercus species) attracted far more cicadas than any other genus, both for feeding underground and for adult chorusing. Maples drew significantly fewer nymphs and adults. If you’re planting new trees and live in a periodical cicada zone, choosing maples, conifers, or other non-preferred species near your home can reduce future noise. This won’t help with this year’s emergence, but it’s a long-term strategy worth considering before the next 13- or 17-year cycle.
Skip the Pesticides
Spraying insecticides on cicadas is both ineffective and counterproductive. The sheer volume of a cicada emergence means you’d never kill enough to make a dent in the noise. More importantly, broad-spectrum pesticides applied during an emergence will kill pollinators, predatory insects, and other beneficial species that share the same trees. Entomologists consistently advise against it. The cicadas will be gone in weeks regardless.
Manage the Noise Indoors
White noise machines, fans, and closed windows are your most reliable daily tools. If the chorus is loudest on one side of your house, keep those windows shut during afternoon peak hours and open windows on the quieter side for airflow. A simple box fan near an open window can mask a surprising amount of outdoor noise. For sleeping, a white noise app set to brown or pink noise (lower-pitched, less hissy) does a good job of covering the high-frequency drone.
Protect Your Hearing Outdoors
Standing near a heavily infested tree, noise levels can approach 100 decibels. That’s well above the 85-decibel threshold that NIOSH considers the limit for safe prolonged exposure. At typical yard distances, you’re likely getting less intense exposure, and the noise drops off quickly as you move away from dense tree canopy. Still, if you’re doing yard work directly under infested trees for extended periods, foam earplugs or noise-reducing earbuds are a reasonable precaution. For casual outdoor time at normal distances, hearing damage is unlikely, despite some alarming headlines comparing cicadas to jet engines.
Wait Them Out
Adult periodical cicadas live four to six weeks after emerging. Annual cicadas, the green and black ones that show up every summer, have a longer but less intense season, typically peaking for a few weeks in July and August. Either way, the noise has a hard expiration date. The males sing, they mate, the females lay eggs in tree branches, and then the entire generation dies. The eggs hatch six to ten weeks later, and the tiny nymphs drop silently to the ground to begin their years-long underground development. By midsummer, the only evidence they were ever there is some minor twig damage and the memory of all that noise.