Hurricane Irene 2011 (and its birds)

This site was meant to provide near REAL-TIME bird reporting DURING Hurricane Irene, to show the "storm-birds" blown up and into the entire Atlantic Coast (from Florida up to Maine and the Maritime Provinces), starting August 24th 2011, and ending around August 31st, about one week later, after the storm dissipated. That plan was interrupted for 102 hours on the morning of 8/28 when the hurricane made a direct hit on us and shut down our electricity, water, internet, etc.

This site focuses on these questions

Sept 13: WHITE-TAILED TROPICBIRD found in CT on Aug 28th! Read this fascinating story at Greg's site....

Talking Nature with Greg Hanisek » Irene’s Biggest Present

SEPT 10: CURRENTLY WORKING WITH THE eBIRD TEAM TO GET ALL HURRICANE BIRDS INTO eBIRD. PLEASE ENTER YOUR STORM-BIRDS INTO eBIRD THIS WEEK, OR CONTACT ME (robben99@gmail.com) OR MARSHALL ILIFF TO ASSIST.

This Hurricane Irene blog was meant to be helpful for just ONE WEEK to provide REAL-TIME reporting of ALL Atlantic coast storm-birds DURING the "teeth" of the storm, but the storm's winds and flooding killed our electricity and this blog. Without electricity, water and internet for 102 hours prevented us reporting during the most exciting part of the hurricane and its birding aftermath.

Instead of trying to "catch-up" and reconstruct those 102 missing hours from the archived listserv reports, we will instead 1) summarize them, 2) learn what we can from this "experiment" in real-time-hurricane-bird-blogging, 3) request eBird data entry of all hurricane reports, and 4) get ready for the NEXT hurricane this year!

Therefore we will refocus on the latest current map of the NEXT hurricanes and their projected storm tracks.....

Tropical Storms and Hurricanes (and the wind speed probabilities map... Wind Speed Projections ) and prepare again to answer these questions....

What impacts will the next hurricane have on birds on the East Coast of the USA (plus the western Atlantic and maritime Canada)? And how will that be reflected on the twenty main internet bird lists covering that region?

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Day #5 Hurricane Irene scraping along the coast of DelMarVa and NewJersey

Hurricane Irene has been grazing along the coast line since the Carolinas, but now it seems to be headed straight for its main landfall in NY between New York City and central Long Island NY. Therefore we are going to shift to a more detailed map for Irene's last hours over the ocean. We will use the WunderMap from WUnderground.com, and a sample of that a few minutes after midnight on Sunday August 28th is shown here.... you can click on any of the images to enlarge the maps....

Map from WunderMap

This map is from WunderMap, and it is recommended that you click on this link to see the latest version... WunderMap Interactive Radar & Weather Stations : Weather Underground

Here is the WunderMap at 12:30am Sunday morning, showing most computer models' trajectories projecting the eye of the hurricane to hit New York City, perhaps around noon today/Sunday....

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Hurricanes are Dangerous

Hurricanes are dangerous, damaging and costly. This site is NOT recommending that anybody put themselves in harm's way, in a hurricane, or take any other risks. Do not go out and take risks during or after the storm. Be careful, especially about water surges, falling trees and poles, downed power lines with high voltage, etc. Consider this expert's warning about THIS storm, with a possible 10-15 foot storm surge of water...... Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog : Irene an extremely dangerous storm surge threat to the mid-Atlantic and New England : Weather Underground

And follow the National Weather Service advisories...

Hurricane IRENE Public Advisory

Hurricane Birds

Lets define "hurricane birds" as those which the hurricane has carried north (or on-shore) from their normal southerly/tropical or pelagic areas. These birds are displaced and disoriented temporarily, sometimes regaining their bearings and quickly departing. Sooty Tern and Bridled Tern are two good examples, but many other species are possible. See this article for a fuller list of species.... Hurricane Irene redux — eBird

As hurricane birds are reported this week we will add a link to show info on each species...

Brown Noddy Brown Noddy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sooty Tern Sooty Tern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bridled Tern Bridled Tern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magnificent Frigate Bird Magnificent Frigatebird - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Key Links

If you follow only one map of tropical storms and hurricanes, this is the one to follow... This useful storm track map is taken from the NOAA National Hurricane Center site, and provides the frequently updated and evolving projected track of storms....

Hurricanes

and here is an easily printed/saved version of that map, but this version may be a few hours behind the one above...

09L_2011_5day.gif 895×716 pixels

Hurricane Irene (2011) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An overview of all tropical weather and hurricanes around the globe...

Tropical Weather : Weather Underground

Hurricane Irene : Tracking Map : Weather Underground

National Hurricane Center

hurricane irene - Google Search

Birds for New England Seabirds

BPI Images of Pelagic Seabirds

Seabirds of North America,pictures of Seabirds of North America