From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
We are now at the peak of the bird migration season, and weather radar does a good job of tracking our feathered friends.
The massive bird swarms over us now are a powerful tool for determining gaps in weather radar coverage.
Let’s examine the regional radar imagery in more detail.
As some background, here are some weather radar-based bird migration statistics (from the Cornell BirdCast website). Birds like to fly from sunset to sunrise, with a peak around midnight/
And we are nearly at the peak time of the year for the southward migration.
At 5 PM yesterday, the combined radar image showed was just some local ground clutter.
The situation was very different at 9 PM, with the birds in flight (below). The birds don’t like to fly offshore.
But over land, there are clearly major radar gaps, such as the southern Oregon Coast, larger areas of north-central Washington, and much of eastern Washington.
Similar story around 3 AM today.
And this morning at 8 AM, the bird signal is gone, with just some ground returns.
The current weather radar locations are shown below with blue dots.
Suggested locations for new radars are shown by the red circles. Additional radars would be very helpful for weather prediction and other uses (e.g., wildfire management, flood warnings, and more).
