Aerie Report, October 20, 2011

Last night's Tiadaghton Audubon Society meeting was an interesting one with Bob and Diane presenting a slide show of their trip to the Peruvian Amazon with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours.

They flew from LA to Lima, Peru and then northeast over the Andes into the Amazon basin. There they boarded a cruise ship and traveled up and down two large tributaries of the Amazon River leaving the ship only to use smaller skiffs to explore the even smaller rivers and streams in search of the myriad bird species the area had to offer. During the two weeks, they added over 350 birds to their life lists.

The entire time they were just a few degrees latitude south of the equator where they had 90 degree temperatures and near equal relative humidity with daily early afternoon heavy rains. While the birding may have been great, those weather conditions alone are a huge turnoff for me! They were not permitted to make any landings for fear of snakes, ants, spiders, scorpions and other venomous creatures. That too is a big turnoff. Then there's the cost. It ain't cheap!

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On the way home from Wellsboro, the sky to our south would occasionally light up indicating there was some heavy weather on the way. It had drizzled and misted all day, but it looked like we were in for some natural pyrotechnics along with heavy rain.

It didn't take long and by 10 PM there was sufficient lightening and thunder to have the cats going bonkers. Luckily the worst of it would pass just to the Aerie's west back toward Wellsboro and beyond through the Pine Creek gorge. Even so, we received 1.08 inches of rain.

While we are currently enjoying a bit of a lull in the rain department, the winds are now coming out of the west-southwest and we are, according to the radar, likely to see more showers later today or this evening. There's a massive circulation centered over Lake Erie just about where Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario meet. Last night we got a taste of the eastern edge but the western side of that circulation is a huge mass of rain covering all of Lake Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, much of Michigan, all of Indiana, and western Ohio. And it's slowly heading this way. The forecasters must know something the map isn't showing, however, as they say we have only a 30% chance of rain over the next 36 hours.