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A medium-size (2.9-3.2 cm. wingspan) streaky grey and yellow-brown moth. Head and thorax yellow-brown and grey; prothoracic collar edged with pale scales and tegulae trimmed with scattered black scales. Forewings yellow-brown or grey brown with lighter streaks, in particular the subterminal area, costa, the spots and the area distal to the claviform pale yellow or orange-brown. Veins CU1 and M3 pale-edged and projecting to the wing margin. A small black basal dash, reduced to a few black scales in many specimens. Fringe dark. Hindwings white, with sooty brown scaling on the veins and forming a wide diffuse terminal band; fringe white. Closely related to and very similar to E. detersa, which are darker, in particular the hindwings, and are much less streaky in appearance. Male genitalia are nearly identical to those of detersa, but females differ in having a single row of stout setae along the edge of the ovipositor lobe in cicatricose (scattered in detersaE. niveilinea is also similar, but is darker and less streaky, has a white transverse line on the thorax, and males have much longer saccular extensions on the valve. Euxoa cicatricose belongs to the detersa group of the subgenus Euxoa. Most specimens of cicatricose seen from southern Alberta lack much of the pale contrasting streaking characteristic of most cicatricose populations elsewhere.

South central Saskatchewan west to southern interior BC, south to southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas, east to western Nebraska and North Dakota. It has been collected in extreme southern Alberta, north to Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.