#USpolitics #Helene #StrangeBlueMass
"Weather radar showed a strange blue mass in the eye of Hurricane Helene. What was it?"
by Benji Jones for vox
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/374541/hurricane-helene-storm-wind-birds-wildlife?ueid=x
Quotes:
"A stunning image shows birds trapped inside the eye of Hurricane Helene."
"Birds are incredible navigators, capable of traveling thousands of miles each year to the same location. But sometimes even they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time — like inside a hurricane."
"Helene was a massive storm when it traveled across the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week. Seabirds likely fled the storm’s extreme winds — which reached 140 miles per hour — and ended up in the eye, where it’s calm. Once inside, they essentially got trapped, unable to pierce through the fierce gusts of the eye wall."
"Storms like Helene can blow seabirds like petrels, jaegers, and frigatebirds far inland. Exhausted, they end up in unfamiliar habitats where they can’t easily find food. “It’s a challenging situation,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We know that birds do die in these things.”
"Though remarkable, it’s not uncommon for birds and insects to get trapped inside the eye of tropical cyclones, according to research by Matthew Van Den Broeke, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Nebraska Lincoln."
"Hurricanes like Helene can also substantially impact fall migration, when several billion birds migrate south ahead of winter. A map of migration from Thursday night, when Helene made landfall, shows that millions of birds were migrating west of the storm in places like Texas and Louisiana, but few if any were moving through Florida."
"When skies clear after a storm, however, birds resume their migration en masse, Farnsworth said. “After the storm passes, we see these big explosions of birds at night,” he told me."
"“They’ve adapted to this, they’ve evolved with it,” Farnsworth said. “Yes, storms are getting more extreme. But birds know how to deal with these things.”
#TakeCareForLife #TakeCareForEarth
#StopBurnigThings #StopEcoside