Even with light winds out of the south the precipitation put a damper on migration across the PNW. There were a few intrepid souls scooting between the showers last night. They can be seen in the velocity plot — little blue speckles headed north from McMinnville to Hillsboro. And to our north you can just make out a few orange dots between the slow moving cloud cover. Sad situation when you need a hand lens to pick birds out of the plot.
I put in the regional composite centered over the KMAX station in Medford. As you can see — you can’t see birds. Only very light movement in the central valley of California. Things are looking bleak for large movements of birds. However, we are getting migrant chatter on the listerves; so a few birds are getting through by sneaking under the radar — so to speak.
Nationally prevalent conditions prevail. Central flyway from Brownsville to Minot is seeing the most action. The density being greatest at the south and north ends of that stretch.
The high pressure system that was centered over Hudson Bay has slipped south over the Great Lakes but the strong north winds along the leading edge still covers most of the east.
Be sure to check out the other migration commentary found in the side bar under Nexrad Trackers. Tom Auer has an interesting detailed analysis of movement on the east coast today.
eBird usually posts their BirdCast – Migration Forecast on Friday’s but it’s not up yet. Here is the link – i’m sure it will be up later today. When it is, i will update this post. UPDATE: the eBird team has both the Forecast for this week and the Report from last week up on the site.
birds over portland 