Wind

Yesterday, November 1, we had strong wind (B = 2,3) early in the morning (I was there at 9:00 with high hopes), continuing most of the day. I expected lots of RTs, but saw very little until the 12 to 1 period (EDT). I talked with KT at about 10:00 and she said there was no wind in the valley where she was in the morning. I tried to see leaves moving on the ridges, but there was little movement. My impression was that there was wind on the mountain and not in the valley - thus the sparse number of hawks early. But between 12 and 4, we had 33 RTs.

Today, I looked at the weather map from Buchanan for yesterday (November 1st). Here it is:




I had the wind as varying from W, WNW and NW. I had speed at a constant 2 to 3. You can see that the wind in Buchanan did not pick up until around noon.

Here is a map from Roanoke which is lower than the site in Buchanan, I believe:



You can see that the wind speed did not get above 10 MPH until after noon. I believe this data confirms my impression that there was more wind on the mountain than in the valley and that this might explain the lack of hawks until there was wind in the valley. Additionally, there were clouds most of the day with some clearing during the noon hour (10% from previous 70%). It might be instructive to have a similar day with few clouds to determine if hawks could get up using thermals.

This is an exercise in attempting to use data sources to confirm observations.

bj