Normal years, it is not like this, @John Brunner . We hear them mostly at night, and they are chirping somewhere close to us, on the ground or in a tree . This, we have not heard anything that sounds like regular chirping sounds, just the constant high-pitched sound that comes from somewhere in the distance, and not in our yard. It is weird. Maybe we just have not reached the mating stage yet where we hear them in the front yard all night, and the ones I posted the picture of are just the dead shells where they crawled up out of the ground from under the tree and shed their skins. The ground under that tree is totally covered with skins. We have cedar trees, and they do not seem to have been under those like they do the leaf trees.
Oh, yeah. I know. I've lived in Virginia since 1963 and experienced my first cicada invasion around that time. The years of small broods brings out enough to be a summertime background noise. Larger broods are overwhelming. I am reminded of a coworker who moved here from California during the summer and said "John, the trees are talking to me."