9/8 (and some 9/7) IL Migration Report

Winds in IL...click to see live

Hey everyone,

My apologies for not posting last night...a trip to and from Carlyle all the way from Chicago in one day really takes it out of you. Then again, no one should complain about this, an awesome photo of Saturday's highlight by Ron Bradley.

Anyhow, last night was interesting because like tonight, most of the state was dominated by fairly weak southerly winds. But unlike tonight, the northern parts of the prairie state experienced easterly winds with enough of a northerly twang to get birds moving. We got a nice variety of new birds from out east, not the least of which was a Black-legged Kittiwake at McGinnis Slough. Warblers and some other passerines also seemed to influx.

Tonight, the state overall has worse conditions overall from a meteorological perspective; the north of the state is now dominated by strong easterlies, and the rest of the state is dominated by southerlies. Birds seem to be moving in light concentrations tonight, and this will likely increase very slightly

IL Migration at time of
posting.

through the night, but there's also a lot of noise in the radar over Illinois, and I'm not sure all of it is birds. We need a doppler radar expert here to interpret it. Queue quest speaker of Tom Skilling...(wishful thinking).

Looking forward in time, Southerly winds are forecast to continue at least through Tuesday, but looking at that day on Surface Analysis, it looks like a cold front from the north may change up the winds. We shall see, my friends.

To predict what sorts of birds to be looking for, see the master list here.

Until tomorrow, over and out.

Surface Analysis 48-hour Forecast...is anyone else excited by that cold front?