Significa

• By Wilson P. Dizard III
• Aug 13, 2003

Hindsight may be 20/20, but occasionally foresight is, too. This phenomenon applies to an event that will grab the attention of Washington-area IT professionals'and all people in the area'next spring: the return of the 17-year locusts. The noisy bugs, properly known as periodical cicadas, last appeared around the nation's capital in 1987.

Harbingers of the locusts' return have shown up on state and local government Web pages, such as the Ohio Natural Resources Department's Forestry Division at www.ohiodnr.com/forestry.

And the Cook County, Ill., Forest Preserve District has posted a bulletin at newton.dep.anl.gov, a site run by the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory.

The extremely noisy insects live underground by the millions until they emerge briefly to mate and deposit eggs for the next generation.