While not optimal, the calm winds did provide some opportunity for a few birds to move last night. Here’s the Fort DIX radar feed from sunset last night through sunrise this morning. The base reflectivity shows some activity just after sunset, increasing until about midnight, and decreasing quickly thereafter. Most of this is not bird migration, as can be told by the base velocity image. By looking at the base velocity image you can see that the movement across the radar’s view is very scattered. There is some light movement at higher altitude (toward the perimeter of the circle) that shows the N–>S trajectory (birds), whereas most of the signal has no velocity (anomalous propagation), or low velocity (possibly some pollen, or dust, or insects) and moving in the wrong direction.

Frames are every 1/2 hour for reflectivity and velocity, and 1 hour for the regional composite. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

The most recent forecast is calling for the the approaching cold front to stall over our area on Sunday, and move offshore either Sunday evening or Monday. Should it pass on Sunday before dark, then we could see a nice big push as early as Sunday night. Otherwise look for high densities of nocturnal migration on Monday night, dependent on the passing front. With Northwest winds forecast, the best locations after a night of migration will be Sandy Hook to the north, and Cape May to the south. Because this front is packing some heavy precipitation, we’ll have to watch for any fallout conditions along the frontal boundary which may be anywhere at this point…stay tuned.

Good Birding!

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