The cold front arriving from the west caused strong southeast winds over the Mid-Atlantic last night, and light southeasterly winds as far south as Cuba. This triggered heavy migration from Cuba up through South Carolina, and then again from New Jersey up into Northern New York and Maine. 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.

So while migration was particularly heavy over most of the Eastern Flyway last night, the strong easterly winds over the Mid-Atlantic meant that most migrants were able to take the inland passage. I say “able” because more often than not these landbirds prefer to be away from the coast since most of their breeding habitat lies due north and west of New Jersey (although the New England region is also extremely important to many individuals of many species, it represents a smaller portion of the total habitat area). Looking at the velocity and reflectivity images you can clearly see New Jersey and Manhattan “emptying” as birds head out on a northwest trajectory (pretty cool, actually… although I think I’ll catch up on some other work today instead of trying to find any concentrations of migrants).

If the forecast models are correct, we should see more southeast winds tonight as the front pushes over us heading east. Hopefully the precipitation packed in the low pressure system will keep birds from migrating tonight, because tomorrow night things begin to shape up. On Sunday night, with the low offshore, we should see WSW winds return to the region. These conditions will improve into Monday with winds turning more southwesterly along more of the Eastern and Mississippi Flyways such that Monday night will provide the best opportunity for a big flight into the region. I’ll keep an eye on the weather and will post updates to Twitter as things develop.

Until then, good birding!

David