9/11 IL Migration Report

Me likey these cold fronts...more northerly winds to come

Hey everybody!

So tonight marks the beginning of the hole in the metaphorical tunnel. A cold front passed/is passing through today, but rather than bring northerly winds, they brought primarily westerly winds. Weird, right? Luckily, there's just enough of a northerly tinge that birds north of the front are moving...and they are indeed spring loaded. Northerly IL is getting moderate to heavy migration right now. The coolest part of this is that the storm line carried right above the cold front is visible on radar, so we can clearly see the cutoff

Check out the madness in Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Minnesota...that could be us tomorrow. Also
notice the storm line faintly dividing better and
worst (north and south respectively) in migration.

between good enough and bad migratory conditions; there's so much migration north of the storm line, and much less below. This is cool stuff guys!

Even more luckily for us, multiple cold fronts north of the one in-state now are headed our direction, and it looks like by tomorrow afternoon, the state will be dominated by northerly winds!! So even more than tonight in IL, expect tomorrow night to hold an absolute explosion of migration. I'm expecting some green on the radar--just look at Wisconsin, which is about a day ahead of us in these weather systems. They're getting migration at epic proportions. Gosh I'm excited.

So tomorrow morning, expect arrivals and influxes of hummingbirds, flycatchers, vireos, thrushes, warblers, and some sparrows in areas north of the southbound cold front. Tomorrow night, the whole state will get the big kahuna.

Good stuff all. Until tomorrow.