While the birding throughout New Jersey has been good lately, we haven’t seen a big flight of nocturnal migrants arriving in the Garden State for a few nights. This has been due primarily to the strong Northwest flow over the region, and as the past has demonstrated, once this clears out we should see an uncorking of the migrant backlog to our south. Birds have been coming up the Central and Mississippi flyways much more regularly of late, but we still should see good numbers piling up in the southeastern US.

Tonight the winds at 3000 feet are forecast to remain out of the north, all the way down into South Carolina, but conducive to migration in Georgia and N. Florida. With that, we should expect to see some birds making their way into South Carolina, but not much further.

By Tuesday night, though, winds will have turned south/southwest over the Carolinas, while the winds over the Delmarva remain out of the northwest. If the winds are light enough, we could see a push into southern NJ on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Otherwise, expect the pileup to continue to our south.

By Wednesday night the winds over New Jersey and points south will be out of the southwest/WSW, and we could see a big flight into the Garden State, if (and this is the big if) the birds have time to take off before heavy precipitation arrives. Calling that timing, even this far out, is a bit of a gamble; so I’ll refrain- but either way, this is the weather to watch.

I’ll have the radar back up and running tomorrow morning, although I doubt it’ll show much until we get closer to mid-week.

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Viva Migration!

David