Saturday 11 October 2014

A Triple Weather Alert

THREE (yes, 3!) weather systems/events are currently in the making, and each one of them could very well make for a legendary day of birding in Newfoundland.

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Alert #1: Holyrood seabird event Monday morning (or even Sunday afternoon/evening)? That alert was almost predictable!

Strong Northerly winds starting Sunday afternoon and continuing throughout the night and into Monday. Only problem is that the winds seem to have too much of a Westerly component overnight. But that could change. Still worth checking Holyrood Monday morning, especially since it's not supposed to be raining!!

A storm in early to mid October, 2009 produced several jaegers, a skua, phalaropes, and the usual storm-petrels. See here and here.

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Alert #2: Currently the most exciting of the alerts in my opinion.



Winds from Britian/Ireland and Iceland headed straight for Newfoundland on Thursday!

What's even more shocking is that the weather maps from pretty much the exact same date last year show the exact same winds (see here). That storm was associated with multiple Hornemanni's Hoary Redpolls, and a Pink-footed Goose. And could very well be the source of the Common Snipe found in January of this year (October is peak migration time for snipe). Let's see if we can do better this time around!

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The third alert is in the hurricane department: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

 That red area shows a high probability of a tropical storm developing in the next 5 days. Obviously, no one knows what it'll do over the next couple weeks - but it's off to a great start to say the least.