A frontal boundary stretched across the US restricted migration into the Mid-Atlantic last night. Here’s the radar from sunset last night through 5:00am this morning.
Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.
You can see the remnant low pressure system in the NE composite image as it peters out over New Jersey into this morning. That, plus the light northerly surface winds, appear to have put the damper on any migration into the region last night. To our north, though, you can see that birds were moving. New York and Maine specifically showed the clearest signs of northbound migration.
Locally we should expect little turnover as most birds within the state will have stuck around another day. Some shifts in habitat are likely as birds attempt to find optimal forage and those that breed locally attempt to find territories.
It looks as if high pressure will build in today and drift eastward into tomorrow, keeping the winds WNW and not particularly good for migration. By Sunday night, though, we should see the next front approach and the wind gradient tighten up such that WSW winds will prevail. This is sure to bring a good pulse of migrants into the region for Monday morning with coastal and inland locations looking pretty excellent. I’m optimistic that with all of the southerly flow from Mexico to the Gulf states this past week, we’ll be seeing a good showing of Neotropical migrants on Monday.
In the meantime I’m heading to Irvine Nature Center, in Owings Mills, MD today to give a presentation on (guess what!) using weather forecasts and radar to predict birding conditions. If you’re in the ‘hood, come on by!
You can check out their website here:
http://explorenature.org/experience-irvine/birding-seminar
I’ll also be doing an in-depth 2-day workshop with a field trip for the spring NJ Audubon Cape MAYgration where we’ll really dig into the weather and radar products in a classroom setting, and then based on our predictions we’ll head out into the field the following morning.
Good Birding
David
2 responses to “Nothing over NJ, but birds moving to our north”
Hi David,
Great blog; your stuff is awesome! I was wondering if, when you refer to the positioning of certain fronts (like in this post), you might be able to also attach a weather map that shows the location of the fronts you’re referring to–since when I go to look, say, the next day, the front may have moved considerably in the interim. Just an idea.
Regardless, keep it up!
Benjamin
Hey Benjamin-
I totally hear you. Unfortunately right now it takes all of my time just to get the radar up in a timely fashion. Under most circumstances, if you view the regional composite, you can see the front in terms of precipitation around pressure systems and along frontal boundaries. Also, if you head back over to the real-time radar site within a few days of the day you’re interested in, you can browse the recent history of radar, and see the current surface analysis. I hope that helps!
Cheers- and keep up the good work yourself!
David