🌡️ What Cicadas Tell Us About Tomorrow

A desert's desperate duet with doom as cicadas scream climate warnings through 110-degree borderland heat

Jun 30, 2025

😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾

Imagine the desert as a giant orchestra where every plant and animal 🐢🌵 knows exactly when to play their part. Cicadas 🦗 are like the drummers—they come out when it gets really hot ☀️ and start making loud buzzing sounds 🎶 to find mates and signal that the summer rainy season is about to begin 🌧️. But climate change 🌡️ is like someone changing the sheet music without telling the musicians 🎼.

The cicadas are still trying to play their parts, but the timing is getting mixed up because the weather is getting hotter faster than ever before 🔥. Scientists are studying these changes 🔬 because when one part of the desert's "orchestra" gets confused, it can mess up the whole song 🎻 that keeps the ecosystem healthy 🌍.

🗝️ Takeaways

🌡️ Tucson hit 110°F on June 30, 2025, with rain finally expected July 1st—a stark example of how extreme heat and monsoon timing are shifting due to climate change
🦗 Cicadas use specialized organs called tymbals to create their mating calls, which intensify as temperatures and humidity rise before monsoon season
📊 Arizona temperatures have increased 2.5°F since 1900, with the Southwest experiencing the most dramatic spring warming in the nation (up to 6°F since 1970)
⚠️ Climate change is disrupting cicada emergence timing globally, with some broods emerging weeks earlier than historical norms due to shifting soil temperatures
🌧️ Despite predictions for above-normal 2025 monsoon rainfall, the "new normal" for Phoenix is 2.43 inches—more than a quarter-inch drier than previous averages
🌱 Research shows cicadas are particularly vulnerable as ectothermic insects whose entire life cycle is calibrated to specific temperature ranges that are shifting
🏛️ Both major political parties prioritize corporate interests over climate action, leaving borderland communities vulnerable to increasing heat and water stress
🔬 Scientists warn that continued warming could cause permanent shifts in cicada life cycles, potentially disrupting entire desert ecosystem food webs

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Three Sonorans

Jun 14

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When Mother Nature Cranks the Volume to Eleven: A Desert's Desperate Duet with Doom

By Three Sonorans

I'm cruising through the concrete-cooking borderlands this afternoon, radio crackling like bacon in Satan's skillet, watching my troca’s thermometer climb toward that delightfully dystopian 110°F mark.

¡Órale, qué calor!

The Sonoran Desert stretches out like God's forgotten griddle, broken only by ancient saguaros throwing shade (literally the only shade available) and palo verde trees stubbornly photosynthesizing their way through planetary meltdown.

But wait—there's more!

Cutting through this symphony of suffering comes the relentless drone of cicadas, las chicharras, nature's original climate activists screaming their tiny hearts out about the apocalypse we've ordered for takeout.

These buzzing barometers are basically the desert's unpaid meteorologists, their intensifying cries herald not just triple-digit temperatures (because apparently 100°F wasn't hot enough for capitalism), but the promise of monsoon rains that may or may not show up depending on how badly we've broken the planet this week.

Es un desmadre, this heat, but somehow these little desert divas thrive in conditions that would make a salamander file for workers' comp.

Rolling down my windows at a Casas Adobes stoplight, their chorus hits like a sonic boom of biological desperation—a slow-motion laser beam of sound emanating from every tree, bush, and shadow where life clings on like that last thread of democracy we're all pretending still exists.

Today's milestone?

Tucson's thermometer is doing its best impersonation of hell's thermostat, hitting 110 degrees on June 30th, with rain allegedly arriving tomorrow—July 1st—because apparently Mother Nature reads calendars now and respects our desperate need for cosmic punctuality about as much as politicians respect campaign promises.

The bitter irony burns hotter than the asphalt: climate models predict above-normal precipitation for Arizona's 2025 monsoon season, yet here we are, slow-roasting under record-breaking heat while waiting for clouds that may deliver about as reliably as trickle-down economics.

No mames, Mother Nature—this timing is worse than a Marvel movie release schedule.

The Science of Screaming into the Void (Also Known as Desert Acoustics)

To decode this wall-to-wall wailing, we need to appreciate the remarkable biology behind what's essentially an insect rave that makes Coachella look like a library reading hour.

The male cicadas produce their ear-splitting serenades using tymbals—specialized drum-like organs that flex faster than a politician's principles during election season—like Rex Scott did with Project Blue while ignoring his constituents and selling out our water en este desierto seco.

What sounds like one continuous scream of existential dread is actually a complex symphony where multiple species broadcast on different frequencies, creating layered soundscapes that veteran desert dwellers read like stock market crashes: inevitable, predictable, and increasingly terrifying.

Unlike their eastern cousins—those famous periodical cicadas that emerge every 13 or 17 years like clockwork in synchronized spectacles that make Swiss trains look unreliable—our Sonoran Desert cicadas march to their own apocalyptic drummer.

They're annual species that time their emergence to coincide with the buildup of heat and humidity that precedes monsoon season, assuming monsoon season still exists in any recognizable form.

When soil temperatures hit that critical 64°F threshold and daytime highs begin their relentless assault on the century mark, cicadas know it's showtime.

¿Qué más? They're nature's original weather forecasters, infinitely more reliable than those meteorólogos on TV who somehow make predicting sunshine in the desert sound uncertain.

But here's where this desert drama takes a turn darker than crude oil: Research reveals that cicadas, being ectothermic insects, are particularly vulnerable to temperature changes. Their entire existence—from emergence timing to mating call effectiveness—is calibrated to specific temperature ranges that climate change is scrambling faster than eggs on Phoenix pavement.

When Time Becomes a Flat Circle of Climate Chaos

Evidence is mounting faster than corporate debt that our desert's cicada chorus may be broadcasting an SOS about climate disruption that goes way beyond simple seasonal confusion.

Research by the Climate Reality Project shows cicadas elsewhere emerging earlier than historical norms, sometimes by weeks—like nature's version of showing up to a party before the host has even bought beer.

University of Connecticut researchers warn that rising temperatures may trigger "an increase in unexpected, oddly-timed emergences, and, in the extreme, a breakdown of periodicity in these insects."

Translation: we're witnessing evolutionary schedules getting scrambled faster than Fox News fact-checkers during a Trump rally.

Here in Arizona, climate change's fingerprints are all over our landscape like CSI evidence at a fossil fuel crime scene. EPA data shows temperatures in Arizona have increased 2.5°F since 1900, with projections showing continued warming throughout this century because apparently we haven't learned enough lessons from planetary overheating yet.

The Southwest has experienced the nation's most dramatic spring warming, with locations in Nevada, Texas, and Arizona seeing temperature increases exceeding 6°F since 1970.

¡Está cabrón! That's not weather variation—that's climate modification courtesy of corporate greed.

For our cicadas, this means environmental cues they've relied on for millennia—precise soil temperatures, seasonal plant growth patterns, the delicate balance of heat and moisture triggering emergence—are shifting faster than a politician's position on healthcare.

Dr. Chris Simon, a leading cicada researcher, theorizes that warmer temperatures are extending growing seasons of plants cicadas feed on underground, potentially accelerating their development and scrambling their natural timing like a cosmic egg beater.

The Broader Orchestra of Ecological Catastrophe

But cicadas represent just one instrument in the desert's increasingly discordant orchestra, their changing patterns reflecting broader ecosystem disruptions that should concern anyone who enjoys breathing, drinking water, or living on a habitable planet.

The same climatic forces disrupting cicada emergence are transforming our entire region in ways that threaten both natural systems and human communities, particularly those without enough political capital to buy air conditioning or politicians.

Consider the monsoon itself, that weather pattern our cicadas herald with such desperate reliability. According to AZPM, we're recovering from one of the driest winter and spring seasons on record, with Tucson experiencing its second-driest winter ever—because apparently regular drought wasn't challenging enough for capitalism's climate change challenge mode.

While meteorologists suggest dry conditions might favor stronger monsoon seasons (dry soil helps establish high-pressure systems driving monsoon flow), the overall trend points toward a hotter, more arid climate that challenges desert life's very foundations.

It's like cosmic irony with a PhD in meteorology and a minor in sadism.

Corporate media loves dissecting individual weather events like they're analyzing reality TV drama, parsing each storm or drought as isolated incidents rather than symptoms of systemic planetary breakdown.

But nosotros que vivimos aquí—those of us experiencing daily temperature torture and seasonal timing scrambles—know better. We're witnessing fundamental Sonoran Desert ecosystem transformation, driven not by natural climate cycles but by relentless fossil fuel burning and corporate profit prioritization over planetary health, and giving our precious water away for thirsty data centers.

Our political leaders, whether sporting red or blue team jerseys, have proven themselves more loyal to oil and gas companies than constituents who elected them.

While we marinate in record-breaking heat and pray for rains that arrive later, lighter, or not at all, they continue approving drilling permits, subsidizing fossil fuel extraction, giving our sacred water to Project Blue ,and offering thoughts and prayers to communities bearing climate change's brunt.

Puras mentiras when they promise help while Big Oil lines their campaign coffers thicker than crude.

Decoding the Data Behind the Drone

Let's examine the numbers, because unlike politicians, data doesn't require campaign contributions to tell the truth.

Current forecasts for Arizona's 2025 monsoon predict 33-50% chances of above-normal precipitation, particularly in east-central Arizona. Sounds promising until you realize "normal" Phoenix monsoon precipitation now measures just 2.43 inches—more than a quarter-inch drier than previous 30-year averages.

Climate change isn't just cranking up heat; it's systematically reducing regional water resources while increasing cooling and irrigation demand. It's like economic inequality, but for precipitation.

The monsoon's new "normal" tells a systematic drying story that corporate interests would prefer we ignore harder than labor violations. Every decade, meteorologists recalculate averages based on recent 30-year periods. The latest 2021 update revealed baseline summer rainfall expectations have shifted dramatically downward.

Meanwhile, temperature records fall with alarming regularity, like dominoes in a particularly vindictive game of planetary Jenga. Hitting 110°F at June's end—when temperatures typically peak in the low 100s—isn't just inconvenient for those lacking reliable air conditioning.

It's a harbinger of extreme heat that will stress electrical grids, threaten public health, and push desert ecosystems beyond adaptive limits. Let’s give what water remains to Project Blue while we are at it!

Está bien fregado, this new reality we're inhabiting.

Climate Justice: Where Heat Meets Inequality

In the borderlands, where communities lack adequate cooling resources and outdoor workers face life-threatening heat exposure, these aren't just environmental issues—they're social and economic justice matters hotter than asphalt in August.

The same corporate interests driving climate change often exploit low-wage workers laboring in dangerous heat, denying basic protections like rest breaks, shade, and water.

La raza working construction, landscaping, agriculture—they're experiencing this heat's full fury while jefes make profit-over-people decisions from air-conditioned offices.

Our cicadas don't vote, lobby, or contribute to campaigns. They simply respond to environmental conditions they encounter, their biological systems adapting as evolution allows to a world changing faster than natural selection can accommodate. They're like most humans on this planet—bearing consequences of decisions made by powerful interests they can't influence.

Shifting cicada emergence timing should alarm us not just because we'll lose distinctive desert sounds, but because it represents ecosystem collapse's canary in the coal mine. These insects participate in complex relationship webs including plants they feed on, birds and animals depending on them for food, and human communities that have learned reading their patterns as seasonal change indicators.

Traditional Wisdom Meets Modern Mayhem

For millennia, Sonoran Desert Indigenous peoples—including the Tohono O'odham, whose traditional territory spans both sides of artificial borders cutting through our region—have read desert seasonal signs with sophisticated understanding.

They knew when to harvest saguaro fruit, plant tepary beans, prepare for rains. Cicada emergence timing was part of this complex calendar, integrated with observations of plant flowering, bird migration, and countless other natural phenomena.

Nuestros antepasados knew how to listen to the land instead of corporate quarterly reports.

Today, as climate change disrupts ancient patterns, we risk losing not just ecological stability but traditional knowledge systems that have sustained human communities in this harsh landscape for thousands of years. Corporate-driven climate transformation represents cultural violence, severing people-place connections that can't be easily restored—like trying to reboot a crashed hard drive with thoughts and prayers.

This particularly affects border communities, where families have maintained deep land ties despite arbitrary lines drawn through ancestral territories. Climate change doesn't recognize borders any more than cicadas do, but its impacts fall disproportionately on those with minimal political power to demand meaningful action.

Es una chingadera how borders cut through families, ecosystems, and the very fabric of home.

False Promises of Technological Salvation

As summer heat intensifies and water resources dwindle, we're bombarded with technological solution promises to climate change: electric vehicles, solar panels, carbon capture technology—important tools, sure, but none addressing the fundamental issue: an economic system treating the natural world as an endless raw material source and bottomless waste sink.

The same corporate interests that spent decades denying climate science now rebrand themselves as "clean energy" champions while continuing to extract, burn, and pollute. They promise we can maintain current consumption levels by buying the right products, installing the right technologies, trusting the right companies to solve problems they created. It's like arsonists selling fire insurance.

But you can't hear that promise in cicadas' calls. You can't see it in saguaros increasingly stressed by unprecedented heat, their iconic arms literally falling off during extreme weather events like limbs from a dying tree. You can't feel it in 110-degree heat making outdoor work dangerous and forcing energy consumption to unsustainable levels.

Technological optimism pervading mainstream climate discourse ignores the fundamental need for systemic change. We need to transform not just energy sources but our entire relationship with the natural world.

That means challenging corporate power, building community resilience, and learning to live within planetary boundaries rather than constantly pushing beyond them like cosmic boundary-testing teenagers.

Tomorrow's Rain, Yesterday's Wisdom

Writing this, meteorologists predict rain for tomorrow—July 1st, meteorological summer's second month's first day, when monsoon season officially begins.

The irony of hitting peak temperature just as rains supposedly arrive captures something essential about climate change existence: extremes colliding, traditional patterns scrambled, familiarity becoming unpredictable faster than TikTok trends.

But there's hope in that prediction. Desert rain is never just precipitation—it's resurrection. After months of endurance, landscapes explode into bloom. Ephemeral pools fill with tadpoles and fairy shrimp. Air fills with distinctive wet creosote scent, so place-specific that chemists named it: petrichor.

Cicadas know this rhythm, evolved with it, depend on it. Their calls intensify as humidity builds because they sense approaching moisture long before weather instruments detect it.

They're still reading ancient signals, even as those signals become increasingly garbled by human interference with planetary systems—like trying to tune in AM radio during a chubasco.

Building Resilience in Uncertain Times

So what do we do with this knowledge?

How do we respond to reality that our desert's symphony is being rewritten by forces beyond any individual's control, like a cosmic DJ with seriously questionable taste in planetary remixes?

First, we listen. We pay attention to what cicadas tell us, what saguaros show us, what increasingly erratic weather patterns teach us about our changing world. We learn reading these signs not as abstract scientific data but as urgent communications from the more-than-human world we're part of—like nature's version of emergency broadcast systems.

Second, we organize with the fury of a thousand desert summers. Climate change isn't just environmental—it's political, requiring political solutions. That means challenging corporate interests driving fossil fuel extraction, supporting candidates prioritizing climate action over industry profits, and building local resilience that doesn't depend on distant corporate solutions or politicians' promises.

Third, we adapt smarter than a desert plant conserving water. We learn from Indigenous knowledge systems that sustained life here for thousands of years. We build communities withstanding extreme heat, water scarcity, and economic disruption. We create local food systems, mutual aid networks, and decision-making processes prioritizing collective wellbeing over individual profit—revolutionary concepts in late-stage capitalism.

Finally, we remember we're not separate from the natural world we're trying to protect. We're part of the desert's symphony, our human voices adding to choruses of cicadas, quail, and coyotes. Our choices, actions, and political organizing all contribute to this place's ongoing composition we call home.

The Call to Revolutionary Action

Cicadas calling through today's heat won't wait for politicians to act, corporations to change course, or technological miracles to save us. They're responding to conditions as they find them, adapting as evolution allows to a human-transformed world.

We can learn from their example: responding to reality rather than waiting for permission, adapting to current conditions rather than clinging to what was—like nature's version of "adapt or die," but with more buzzing and less corporate consulting fees.

This means supporting grassroots organizations working on climate justice in our region with the passion of cicadas calling for mates. It means electing officials prioritizing renewable energy development, water conservation, and outdoor worker protection over oil company campaign contributions. It means building local resilience through community gardens, mutual aid networks, and climate-adapted infrastructure that doesn't depend on corporate benevolence or political promises.

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It also means supporting independent media like Three Sonorans that tells the regional truth, even when that truth challenges powerful interests harder than a summer thunderstorm challenges picnic plans. Corporate media outlets, dependent on advertising revenue from climate-driving industries, can't be trusted for honest reporting our communities need for informed decisions.

Tomorrow's Promise, Today's Responsibility

As sun sets on this record-breaking day and I listen to cicadas' evening serenade, I'm struck by both fragility and resilience of desert life. These insects survived ice ages and volcanic eruptions, droughts and floods, massive ecological transformations that make current climate change seem modest by comparison. But they've never faced changes happening this fast, driven by forces this powerful, with consequences this uncertain.

Tomorrow's predicted rain offers hope—not just for immediate relief, but for what it represents about the desert's enduring renewal capacity. If forecasters are right, tonight's heat will yield to cooling precipitation, cicadas' desperate calls will be answered by Gulf of California moisture, and the ancient heat-humidity dance defining our summer season will continue another year.

But that dance becomes increasingly precarious, its steps less certain, rhythm more erratic. Whether future generations will know the particular joy of monsoon rains after months of desert heat depends on choices we make today—about energy, politics, and the kind of world we're willing to fight for with the tenacity of cicadas screaming into the void.

Cicadas can't make those choices for us. They can only call, hope, and adapt as conditions allow. The rest is up to us—and unlike cicadas, we have voices that can change the world if we're brave enough to use them.

The work of Three Sonorans is made possible by readers like you who understand that independent journalism is as essential as water in the desert.

If you value reporting that tells truth about climate change, border communities, and environmental justice in our region without corporate filter or political spin, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription.

Your support helps us continue investigating stories that matter most to borderlands communities while the mainstream media obsesses over whatever shiny object politicians are waving this week.