Occam’s Razor – the simplest explanation is most likely
People ask me to look into weird things all the time. Since I operate a weather business that specifically offers weather radar analysis and tracking software, I got asked to look at this image from a Daily Mail article which claimed: Weather experts baffled by mystery plume on New Mexico radar near 1945 nuclear bomb test site
An animation of the plume follows:
I’ve seen images like this dozens of times before.
It is very likely a large swarm of birds taking off. The first two frames are the giveaway. When birds take off from the ground, they are tightly packed from their feeding/roosting area. When they go aloft, they immediately spread out, and that is exactly what we see in the first two frames of the animation. Compare it to Figure 2 in the article below and the animation below and you’ll see what I mean.
Source: NWS Doppler Radar Detects “Roost Ring” on Green Bay
A similar dramatic roost ring was documented on August 10, 2006. And there was a similar event during the Oklahoma Earthquake in Nov 2011.
Our sensitive NEXRAD WSR-88D Doppler Weather Radar network is routinely capable of picking up bird swarms like this, something we couldn’t see with older WSR-57 and WSR-74 weather radars. The NEXRAD system can also pick up bugs and bats that exhibit typical swarm behavior. We’ve all seen huge swarms of birds that blot out the sky, so of course they can be picked up by weather radar looking for rain, since birds, like humans, are mostly made up of water.
It could also be insects, such as these examples:
Weather radar catches massive bug swarm
A vast swarm of bugs that covered much of the northern half of the North Island last night and this morning has been caught on the Metservice weather radar.
MetService didn’t know what it was and entomologists were puzzled.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8340259/Weather-radar-catches-massive-bug-swarm
And: A huge hatch of mayflies on radar:
![188179688_75ca4f94c5[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/188179688_75ca4f94c51.jpg?quality=83)
![gg080111[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gg0801111.gif)
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1683&dat=20060707&id=3LkoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MUUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2110,3731197
From NOAA:
Bird Detection via Doppler Radar
Angie Enyedi (radar animation by Jason Deese)
National Weather Service Jacksonville
Doppler radar transmits pulses of energy into the atmosphere, and when this energy intersects a target, information about the density (radar reflectivity) and motion (radar velocity) of the target is transmitted back to the radar (Figure 1). Most of the time the Doppler radar beam intersects targets composed of water vapor, including clouds, rain drops and hail stones. Meteorologists utilize this data from the radar to interrogate storms, which makes the Doppler radar a critical component of the proactive severe weather warning service that the National Weather Service (NWS) provides.
Sometimes, the radar beam intersects other objects, including birds. When there is a high density of birds in one location, typically during bird migrations, sometimes as the birds take flight the radar beam intersects the flock. This happened in several locations across coastal Southeast Georgia on the morning of October 25, 2009, right around sunrise. This is a favored time for birds, particularly waterfowl, to leave their nocturnal nesting sites on bodies of water to either continue their migration or return to their favorite daytime refuges.
The animation (Figure 2) illustrates two large and one smaller area of birds taking off, as detected by the NWS Jacksonville Doppler radar. In addition, there is a Google Map (from Google Earth) to reference for location (Figure 3). It appears as though the southernmost flock arose from the Satilla River near Woodbine, while the other flock ascended from a tributary of Buttermilk Sound, just west of Little St. Simons Island. A third, but smaller flock, appears to have flown from the western side of Cumberland Island National Seashore.
Many bird enthusiasts utilize radar imagery to track migration patterns. Radar imagery has also been helpful to both birds and humans regarding aviation safety. Most airport terminals use radar data to track birds as they cross flight paths to avoid collisions.
Click here for more information on the NWS Doppler Radar.
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UPDATE: For those of you who say bird swarms can’t be that big…
Reader JohnS notes:
Submitted on 2014/03/19 at 4:05 pm
The playas at 34.655294° -105.900141° might be good candidates for a starting point, since they are probably wettest around this time of year. Note the line of bird choppers to the south.
REPLY: Good candidate, here is the satellite view, clearly a seasonal wetland: http://maps.google.com/?ll=34.759666,-105.867004&spn=2.008193,1.972046&t=h&z=9
Windsong says: March 19, 2014 at 3:36 pm
Large flocks migrating at night quite common in my area. Some interesting images here: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/09/mega-bird-migration.html
I’ve reproduced the relevant parts from Cliff Mass, who writes:
Starting with the radar image (composite of all altitudes) at 7:49 PM Saturday night, we see a lot of ground-clutter returns (the lower radar beams hitting the surface mainly).
About an hour later (9:09 PM) and after sunset, things have really changed. Lots of echoes and some very intense. These are the birds. Birds don’t like to migrate offshore very far and you can see that in the echoes.
12:22 PM the echo coverage has expanded. Lots of birds on the move
5:37 AM there are still some birds, but the numbers are dropping.
And after sunrise at 6:39 AM, nearly all are gone and we are back to ground clutter
The Langley radar is a Doppler radar and it gives the velocity of the targets (in this case birds) towards or away from the radar. Here is the Doppler image at 12:46 AM. Green indicates approaching and red and orange going away. Clearly the birds are heading south!
Now let me show you something interesting. Here in Seattle we have a very special type of weather radar, called a radar-wind profiler, located at the NOAA facility at Sand Point. Instead of sweeping horizontallly, this radar has three static beams, mostly facing upwards. This radar picks up birds as well. Take a look at an image from this radar for the 24-h ending mid-day Sunday. The y-axis is height in meters and time is on the x-axis (in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, UTC), 06 is 11 PM, 12 is 5 AM, etc.). Stronger returns are in purple, blue, and green. The birds are obvious. Around 03 UTC (8 PM) we we see the start of the bird echoes. Lots of flying in the evening, which fades a bit in the middle of the night. But you see a complete collapse after 5-6 AM as it starts getting light out.
“It is very likely a large swarm of birds taking off.”
Do birds exhale CO2 on takeoff? Why else would the latest political derived radar register such an event?
Hitchcock would be intrigued!
Bernie McCune says:
March 19, 2014 at 4:48 pm
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are the tubes small enough so they pour out in a really defined shape? never seen pics of stuff like that, bet it would look cool.
I have seen movies of a murmuration of starlings and there are starling sightings in New Mexico but I don’t think there are the large numbers of starlings found here compared to the UK. They certainly are not native to NM. The bat flights are quite fascinating to watch also but I would love to see a live murmuration of starlings!
Bernie
would these be Jornada Bat Caves?
looking at pics now, pretty cool
Not radar but amazing all the same – starling murmurations.
Interesting animation!
I see that the range rings indicate that the ‘flock’ was around 100 miles away from the radar center. This indicates the ‘flock’ were traveling at a great height, not just taking off.
The tubes are below ground level and are collapsed in several places. There is an extinct volcano several miles north of the bat site. So there are probably many miles of underground tubes in the area. It looks to me that the two colonies occupy adjoining tubes. The north colony tube opens to the south in a collapsed open area about 200-300 meters wide. The north colony underground portion of the tube may be a half of a km long. The south colony underground tube goes south from the big opening. The tubes are big – maybe 8 or 10 stories tall (deep). It seems like there are 10,000s of bats a minute swirling out of the tube openings. Wow! They circle into the sky and on the evening that I watched they seem to fill the sky in every direction and climbed higher until I could no longer see that part of the flight. Of course, as I noted earlier, they just kept pouring out of the mouth for about 30 minutes. The first flight became kind of a trickle,and then the next flight of the other colony started and that lasted for another 30 minutes. They seemed, on that evening anyway, to head off in different directions but I have no idea if that is common. And with so many bats there is a good chance that the radar only picked up a portion of the colonies. More than cool mind boggling to say the least!
Bernie
The real question is how many of those birds got pulverized in wind turbines.
Bernie McCune says:
March 19, 2014 at 5:11 pm
Starlings are not native to North America. They are an invasive weed species here which should be eradicated, as they drive out native species.
A Shakespeare lover released starlings in NYC’s Central Park in 1890 & 1891 because he wanted America to enjoy all the birds mentioned in the Bard’s works. Within a decade the aggressive species had spread clear across the continent.
May he roast in Hell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin
Yes it is the remains of the Jornada del Muerto Volcano. Go to Google Earth and find New Mexico. The volcano is at 32 deg 32 min 1.29 sec N and 106 deg 52 min 0.66 sec W. You can actually see a whole series of collapsed lava tubes to the south and south west of the cone. The bat caves are in that sw series of tubes. This is private land so there is no open access. We had permission to be there that one evening that I got to see this neat event. It apparently happens every evening like clockwork.
Bernie
Regardless whether the radars paint them, the birds are coming north in force, right now.
They know bugs are gonna start emerging from their over-winter lairs.
Now I’ve surmised,…. birds (some/all) “see” in ultraviolet light.
Why else would they have fluorescent plumage.
I ask ?
IIRC, humans did not realize how much birds fly at night until radar became common in NW Europe during The Big One.
If there’s a definitive book on the European Theater night fighter war, it’s Alfred Price’s “Instruments of Darkness”. He’s a postwar RAF electronic warfare specialist who does well in balancing technical & operational aspects of the horrific night skies over WWII Germany.
IIRC the Nachtjagdwaffe claimed 7000 mostly British bombers & probably actually got most of them, unlike inflated day fighter claims.
Bernie McCune says:
March 19, 2014 at 5:53 pm
Speaking of bats emerging like clockwork, Austin, TX has built a music, food, drink, arts, crafts & child activity community festival around the timely flight of its estimated 1.5 million under-bridge bats:
http://www.roadwayevents.com/RoadStar/Events-cat.asp?media1Id=1323
When the local greens get their windmills, they can cut that down to one million bats.
Bernie may be right about bats. However, millions of swallows are migrating this time of year and many other species including the Bosque del Apache Sandhill Cranes. My guess is Swainson Hawks described here- http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/swainsons_hawk/lifehistory
“A classic species of the open country of the Great Plains and the West, Swainson’s Hawks soar on narrow wings or perch on fence posts and irrigation spouts. These elegant gray, white, and brown hawks hunt rodents in flight, wings held in a shallow V, or even run after insects on the ground. In fall, they take off for Argentine wintering grounds—one of the longest migrations of any American raptor—forming flocks of hundreds or thousands as they travel.”
Those interested in bird and other critter photography might take a peek at my photo blog here-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolinabutterflies/
BTW, I’m one of the center left, conservationists, who is a lukewarmer and who follows this and many other climate blogs!
… it’s happened before (chaff release that is) –
One of the more unusual events:
Radar chaff over Redstone Arsenal unusual, lingered in atmosphere 10 hours
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2013/06/radar_chaff_over_redstone_arse.html
and
Chaff Detected by NWS Louisville Radar
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=chaff-jan2006
Some local knowledge: The beginning is quite a ways north of the WSMR, probably 60 miles. There is a lot of Air Force training in that area, both US and German AF, and they like to train at night, so chaff is a possibility. The beginning is also 100 miles east of the Bosce Del Apache on the Rio Grand, which lessens the likelihood of birds.
REPLY: Chaff usually gives much stronger echoes, in the 60+ db range – Anthony
But bats are a possibility. that position is the north end of the lava field.
I wondered about this. It happens with Mexican Freetail bat colonies in central Texas throughout spring and summer. We love our bats!
Of some note, when and where did the dust storm that hit Lubbock Texas Tuesday nite start up?
I have witnessed a flock of Redwing Black birds leaving their roost site on Morning, it took over three hours for the flock to finish passing over. I was on that field goose hunting in north western Minnesota when I was still a youth. In north Dakota the flocks of snow geese look like clouds in the distance. they often travel over twenty miles from their roost site to where they feed, some time that was a determinant for us goose hunters in North Western North Dakota since often they would end up in Canada.
Birds are so cool! Its actually a more interesting explanation, if you like birds.
Re: the first image above from FDX Field Village/Cannon RADAR site
Here may be where this ‘stuff’ is originating – notice the plume originating from what looks like a singular point on the HDX White Sands RADAR:
2228z 17 Mar some sort of activity
0024z Begins in earnest near a ridge:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/displayRad.php?icao=KHDX&prod=bref1&bkgr=black&endDate=20140318&endTime=3&duration=5
On LWIR imagery we have something taking place in that same area at 2345z, low level smoke may show up on RADAR but have little IR signature until a ‘puffy’ cumulus (caused by a rising airmass above a fire) is appears:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/satellite/displaySat.php?region=ABQ&itype=ir&size=large&endDate=20140318&endTime=4&duration=6
One can also see that ‘thing’ move across the Lubbuck NWS RADAR, as seen here:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/displayRad.php?icao=KLBB&prod=bref1&bkgr=black&endDate=20140318&endTime=6&duration=6
And literally ‘through’ the Amarillo RADAR here:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/displayRad.php?icao=KAMA&prod=bref1&bkgr=black&endDate=20140318&endTime=6&duration=6
One *could* work out the speed at which birds were flying given this imagery over a long trek. But
I’m prone to thinking this was smoke, originating back in NM from a short-duration T-storm initiated fire.
VERY DRY conditions (air temp 57 deg F, dew point 7 deg F ) existed on the surface map, as can be seen below for the period:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/displaySfc.php?region=abq&endDate=20140318&endTime=6&duration=8
More info – New Mexico Wildfire map pages:
http://www.nmwatch.org/
http://www.kob.com/article/12328/
Prescribed burn schedules: http://nmfireinfo.com/
Also, a little longer loop of the FDX Field Village RADAR; note the passage over the RADAR site where it is seen to diminish (due to the ‘cone of silence’ effect; NWS WSR-88D looks, sans horizontally, of course) and is seen to ‘reassemble’ on the other side:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/radar/displayRad.php?icao=KFDX&prod=bref1&bkgr=black&endDate=20140318&endTime=5&duration=6
With the proper meteorological conditions, the smoke could have been capped from going above say 5 or 6,000 feet and it would normally be seen to diminish as it becomes either dilute or descends and precipitates back to earth (have seen this due to fires in Mexico before; literally we had ash coming down here in North central Tejas).
.
In regards to the apparent speed with which some of the flocks seem to expand; could it be that rather than the speed of actual birds, we are seeing the speed at which other birds sense the other birds leaving, and then they take off and enter the vision of the radar? So, the radar is showing the expansion of the flock taking off from the ground.
re: JohnS says March 19, 2014 at 3:58 pm
Given the length of the animation (about 1.5 hrs) and distance traveled by the leading edge, it works out to about 60mph.
Have to get up to the 500 mb level to see prevailing westerly winds today, and speeds on the order of thirty knots:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/upper/upaCNTR_500.gif
Only about 15 at the 700 mb level:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/upper/upaCNTR_700.gif
800 mb level:
http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/upper/upaCNTR_850.gif