COBirders, I had a chance to look at the weather a little this morning to make a migration weather forecast. I also noticed that the website that I use, and hopefully you are using more now, has been updated with a new user interface. This is great news for mobile device users as it is much more intuitive and useful on mobile now. For desktop users, this has given some more clarity to the buttons and makes the loading faster. Check it out: earth.nullshool.net
The key thing you need to still do is change the wind altitude to 850hPa (not ideal for CO as we would want higher, but the best we can do on this site). To do so, you still click on the "earth" button in the bottom left corner and scroll through the menus to find the 850hPa button. To navigate through time on this page, you can use the "<< < > >>" section of the menu. Those correspond to -1 day, -3 hours, +3 hours, and +1 day. You'll need that for my challenge. Since the passerine migrants are mostly done aside from the northern migrant sparrows, we have been in a slow trickle with what I am guessing is mostly altitudinal migrants, but there have also been some surprises recently that may be wanderers from around the area that we hadn't detected yet (Little Gull and Scoters were the surprises to me). OR these birds could have migrated in less-than-ideal conditions based on the weather. OR I am/we are looking at computer models which are inherently slightly flawed due to our inability to fully model the atmospheric intricacies. OR I could be missing part of the big picture of migration and weather patterns. *And now for the challenge for those that have read this far...* - *Using earth.nullschool.net <http://earth.nullschool.net>, when do you think we will see our next more obvious push of migrants in the Front Range of CO? * - *For bonus points, where along the Front Range will they see the best concentrations of birds according to the forecasted winds?* - *For double bonus points, what do you think those migrants could be?* Email me directly with answers, or if you are feeling bold, reply to this thread on COBirds so we can all learn from your answers, our mistakes, and the ensuing conversations. Thanks to those of you who wish to play along, and thanks to those of you who keep egging me on happily. I appreciate all the kind words you are throwing my way when I send these emails out. It makes it worth it to just hear from each of you about your experiences and enjoyment of birding. Best in birding, Bryan Bryan Guarente Meteorologist/Instructional Designer UCAR/The COMET Program Boulder, CO -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/CAENnWHvUcafsjYzFAPcrmevsPNLbF5bK3RYJ6f6x-TxeQ%2B48Mg%40mail.gmail.com.
