“Every summer without fail,” said Adam Young, recalling summer nights chasing fireflies as a child in Iowa, “I remember running barefoot in the grass at dusk, listening to the crickets and cicadas, chasing fireflies until it got too dark to see,”
Mr. Young, who would later rise to fame as the musician behind the band Owl City and its song “Fireflies,” still recalls those summers fondly.
“You learned to keep your mouth shut,” he said. “There were thousands of them — you’d ride your bike around and they’d hit you in the face.”
This summer, that childhood magic seems to have made a comeback. From city parks to suburban backyards, fireflies have been lighting up the evening sky across the northeastern United States in greater numbers than in recent years — making it feel as if the opening lines of Mr. Young’s debut hit were the literal truth: “You would not believe your eyes, if 10 million fireflies lit up the world as I fell asleep.”
And the reason? The weather.
Fireflies thrive in warm, humid conditions.
Fireflies, or Lampyridae, are not flies or worms, but beetles, and ancient ones at that.
“They have been around for millions of years before humans evolved,” said Jessica Ware, a curator and the division chair of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
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The post How a Soggy Spring and Hot Summer Nights Made 2025 an ‘Exceptional’ Year for Fireflies appeared first on New York Times.
