Hey cold front- here’s the plan: Come in from the west, stick around for a day if you’d like, and then march on out to the Atlantic like you’re ‘supposed’ to. Let the high pressure build in behind you and give the next front a chance to move in. And the beat goes on.

Of course, if the weather was that predictable, it would never be so much fun to pour over the radar and forecast migration. Here’s the radar from 7:30pm last night through 5:00am this morning.

Frames are every 1/2 hour. Click on the thumbnail to view the full-sized animation.

That last cold front (yes, the pesky one) backed up over the mid-Atlantic last night setting up a barrier to migration over most of coastal New England. Therefore, little to no migration of birds out of this region was evident on the radar last night. Migration did occur throughout southern NY state though, as well as throughout New Jersey under all but the heaviest rainfall. Of course the densest migration occurred south of here over VA, NC, etc. but we won’t dwell too much on that right now. The question now is whether there was enough directional migration to concentrate birds this morning, and whether the overnight precipitation might also help pinpoint birding hotspots today.

Looking at the DIX and DOX radars it’s clear that birds were moving NW->SE overnight which would put a good number of them over Cape May this morning with or without precipitation. Some heavy storm activity early this morning appeared to shut down migration as it passed over the northern Delaware Bay shore and moved NE, but following its passage you can see birds continue to migration and/or new birds enter the airspace from clearer skies to the NW. This suggests to me that we could see fallout conditions throughout the central and western portions of the state. Given that migration was fairly widespread across the state last night, but precipitation was primarily coastal during the major exodus period, I would expect inland locales which experienced heavy precipitation between midnight and 2am to be excellent choices today (whereas coastal locations under heavy precipitation early in the night should not have had enough of a source from which to bring in new birds). Because most of the western portion of the state escaped the major precipitation events, fall hotspots along the Delaware River should be great choices this morning as well. Finally, given the trajectory of migrants throughout the night, Cape May will still produce birds today perhaps even in very good numbers. All in all it doesn’t take many birds to make a good day of birding- it just requires a little push here and a little push there into the right stopover site. Of course, your reports from the field will ultimately decide how this plays out- so please make sure you eBird your observations and please come back and let us know how it went!

On an entirely different note, I need to acknowledge that on this day, three years ago, I posted the radar a little late in the morning because our Corinna Wren had been born at 5:14am. Today she turns three… my how time flies!

Good Birding

David