All I had this morning was 1 Golden Plover and 25+ Lapwing flying over as this weather system starts to intensify bringing some snow and biting cold winds.
Hard weather movements (MORE HERE) require prolonged freezing conditions with frozen ground and water preventing birds from feeding, If these conditions prevail birds undertake escapes movements, heading west or south to reach warmer conditions. Late February is late in the winter to be experiencing such conditions so it will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few days. It very much depends whether the birds decide to sit it out or escape. Many wintering birds would have already started to move back north so this one will certainly be an interesting one to watch.
The synoptic conditions are very interesting too. Basically it is colder here than in the North Pole. A cell of warm air has pushed the Polar Air Mass south so this is the North Pole atmosphere which explains the particularly biting and fresh wind. Perhaps worrying the North Pole is 20 C warmer than average at the moment and 2018 is a record breaking winter temperature year suggesting that Polar warming is accelerating.
Will certainly be interesting what happens on the bird front over next few days. Flysafe are predicting increased migrant activity over the North Sea.
A warm air cell over the North Pole has pushed the Polar Air Mass over Europe
Daily Arctic temperatures in 2018 compared to the average
Radar predictions from FlySafe over the North Sea predict an increase in migrant activity over next few days- presumably hard weather movements
The scene from the Obs window
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