"for X cycles" has no effect

[jobhunts02]

When I add "for X cycles" to my statements in monitrc, e.g.,

if cpu usage > 95% for 5 cycles then alert

It has no effect.  It alerts every cycle as if it was "for 1 cycles."

Is there something else I need to do for the limit to be reached multiple times 
 before alerting?

I am running monit-5.19.0 on Linux 3.19.8.