Winter Cicada alternatively is referred to as hibernating cicadas. These are the insects that stay underground during the frost season. Specifically, these are cicadas that are yet on their nymphal stage in which feeds from roots of trees underground.

Winter Cicadas or ice cicadas are those who belong to the genus Magicicada. These cicadas are commonly known as Periodical Cicadas which may have first emerged about two million years back in the ancient lands of North America when glaciers have had roofed the land spread. Referencing its name as winter cicada these insects have cleverly strategized a conditional method in combatting the cold climate of winter seasons. They basically hibernate underground to a spot deep enough not to feel the cold ice from the surface.

Cicadas are classified according to their life span, thus one-year, three-year, seven-year and 17-year cicadas. The 17-year cicadas are the longest living insects which is yet unopposed. These are literally year counts of their hibernation stage in which these insects keep themselves underground and come out after the year count completion. During their stay within the depths of the ground these winter cicadas utilize the roots of plants and trees as their food.

There are several reasons why cicadas cannot mobile itself during the winter weather. Alike other insects and even true to humans, the cold degenerates and decreases potency of any kind. With winter cicadas and the general cicada family, the usual acts of flying, singing and mating are all negatively impossible.

Winter Cicadas inhabit with a group which is collectively termed as brood. This brood is a community of cicadas which shares all the stages of their nature namely the process of hatching, growing, mating, emerging, and the superlative of becoming adults and their death aggregately. After the long cycle of hibernation, could be one, five, seven or seventeen year cycle, they all surface into the ground and emerges as adults from its nymph form. The whole brood emerges all at the same time.

The process of winter cicadas in emerging into adulthood starts by the climbing of a nymph up a tree or plant. It sets itself in stationary for a while and holds it position. The back of the nymphs splits in halves from their heads to their backs-ends and an adult cicada crawls out. This is the last stage of a cicada reaching its adulthood and only lives for a few weeks more and then dies.

Winter Cicadas mating process does not transpire during the winter, and not even the hibernation period. Adult cicadas mate and the female cicada deposits its eggs into branch of trees. This is done by the utilization of their ovipositors stabbing the soft portions of a tree bark. From the point of egg-laying it hatches after a while letting nymphs directly fall onto the ground. The nymph then digs a hole into the ground and hibernates. This cycle continues over and over repeatedly and is true to all kinds of cicadas as well as with locusts and dog-day cicadas.