The warm sector of the Eastern storm on Friday and Saturday had a long fetch to the due south, all the way to Florida and beyond--tapping in to mild air and moisture all the way to include remnants of a tropical system in the Caribbean. Before the cold front swung through late Saturday, some of us discussed what might turn up along the East Coast in its wake, and we included such Florida-originating species such as Gray Kingbird, or species from even farther south such as austral migrant Fork-tailed Flycatcher. Also, seemed like a good flow to bring back reverse migrants from Florida and the Southeast. Once the winds switched to northwest on Sunday and pushed birds back to the coast and down to peninsula tips such as Cape May, we might see what turned up.

Classic November storms with large warm-sector, conveyor-belt fetches to the southwest, all the way to places such as Texas, are what likely help transport large numbers of Cave Swallows, small numbers of Ash-throated Flycatchers, and other rarities and late, reverse migrants north and northeast to the Midwest, Northeast, and mid-Atlantic. This latest storm instead had a more due-south fetch right along the Eastern Seaboard. But a Cave Swallow turned up at Cape May on 28 October nonetheless, although it may have been a bird that came up several days earlier, as there have been a couple Caves already a few days ago in Ontario. An adult male Summer Tanager in Cape May on the 28th could well have been a reverse migrant that came back north along the Atlantic Coast from somewhere in the direction of Florida in the warm sector, ahead of the cold front.

--Paul Lehman