5/16 IL Migration Report

So tonight, I'm going to keep the discussion about today's migrants to a minimum, not because today's birds weren't awesome, but both because it's getting late and last night saw a little less migration, so birds today were mostly the same.

The big news is happening RIGHT NOW. Look at this

Illinois is barely discernible! Click for a live image.

In case your jaw hasn't dropped at the concentrations of birds moving over our state right now, see the images from all of the 6 NEXRAD units in IL below. Everywhere in Illinois, dark blue and green rule the radar, indicating that moderate to heavy concentrations of birds are moving over our heads as I type this very sentence. Why, you ask? Look no further than here: http://hint.fm/wind/. The state is currently experiencing nearly universal southerly winds, with a frontal boundary creating easterly winds in NE IL. This means that in addition to any arrivals and influxes observed throughout the state tomorrow, NE IL's migrant traps, more likely inland ones, will be packed as birds stop moving in the unfavorable easterly winds. Awesome!

Looking forward into this weekend, winds in N IL are forecast to become more easterly tomorrow, and will gradually shift back to southerly by Saturday, though winds will be SE until early next week. Elsewhere in the state, it appears that winds will be uniformly southerly to southeasterly (like tonight) this weekend, and will shift to southwesterly by early next week. Regardless, winds are forecast to have some sort of southerly influence throughout the state into next week, so birds will be moving north during this time.

Disordered list of IL's current Radar images:

To figure out which species to look for in your area, here are the eBird resources I shared the past few days.
General IL charts: http://bit.ly/129Tru1
Make your own: http://bit.ly/129Tfed

Get excited folks! It should be a pretty good weekend. Until tomorrow, over and out.