April 3rd, 2015

Greetings all,

So, it appears the state has entirely been consumed by northerly winds. These unfavorable headwinds are essentially keeping any migration down tonight, so there won't be much to report on. For that reason, I'm going to skip the writeups on each third of the state, and focus mainly on the forecast looking forward. This will be the M.O. for poor migration nights moving forward.

Tonight: no migration

While tonight is dominated by northerly winds, it's forecast that their rule will be short lived. Due to the movement overhead of a relatively large high pressure system, Illinois will pass into the realm of more favorable southwesterly winds by tomorrow night. By 10 PM at the latest, all of Illinois (including Southern IL, which will be last to get southerly winds) will be experiencing favorable migration conditions. Winds just south of Illinois, however, may not yet be as favorable as the 1st, and such we may not see as much migration as then. Regardless, Sunday morning should be a good time to get out there and witness some new arrivals and influxes.

A forecast map of when winds will
again be favorable throughout IL.
Click to enlarge.

Curious about what you'll find? Check out this eBird page showing bird frequencies in Illinois. I also highly recommend you check out BirdCast's latest migration forecast.

That's a wrap folks! Here's looking forward to Saturday night.