Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Mike Brasher: Welcome in everyone to Waterfowl Weather Live from Ducks Unlimited's National Headquarters here in Memphis, Tennessee. I am Dr. Mike Brasher, Senior Waterfowl Scientist and co-host of the DU Podcast. And we've got weather. We've got Arctic weather across most of the U.S. It is January 7th. Happy New Year, especially Happy New Year to Southern Duck Hunters that have been waiting for this event for a long, long time. We finally got it. And we have three outstanding guests to help us today. discuss what has transpired over the past few days, discuss kind of where we are, and then importantly discuss what the next two or three weeks may look like for those of us that have duck seasons that remain into the end of January. I'm going to turn to our guests right now, two of whom you've met before and have joined us, and we have a new guest for the Waterfowl Weather Livestream. We'll get to him in just a second. But I will go first with just the introductions here. Scott Covert, Chief Meteorologist with KFSM 5 News, CBS 5 News out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. And that's a different background than you've joined from in the past. Tell us what you're doing right now, Scott.

Skot Covert: I just wrapped up a duck hunt at WMA in West Arkansas. This is the first year it was on a draw system, and I was lucky enough to win the draw for today, so I figured you guys would give me a little bit of grace if you understood I was gonna go hunt this morning. It was cold, but we're done for the day, and starting to thaw back out.

Mike Brasher: We're probably going to come back to you and have to ask you how that hunt went, what the conditions were that you encountered, but we're going to continue kind of going around here. We knew whenever we first came up with this idea of doing this waterfowl weather live, we envisioned this type of situation where ideally we'd be able to do one of these right in the middle of one of these storms. We knew that would throw us some curveballs. And so this is a great example of that with you out in the field. So hope everything holds up there. I'm going to go to Chance Gotsch next, our meteorologist from KMIZ out of Columbia, Missouri, ABC Fox affiliate there. Chance, welcome. I understand it's cold there.

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, yeah, we've had some overnight lows back towards zero degrees, just had that big system come through, so a lot of snow and really cool temperatures that we're dealing with right here, and it looks like it might be staying that way.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I like to hear that. If you're a southern hunter, you like to hear that. And then our new guest on Waterfowl Weather Live, a good friend of the Ducks, good friend of mine, a lot of our professional colleagues, Dr. Mike Schummer, associate professor. SUNY ESF up in New York and also host of the Foul Weather podcast, and I think he knows a few things about ducks, weather, and migration. Mike, welcome.

Mike Schummer: Appreciate it, Mike, and thanks for having me. I kind of feel like the redheaded stepchild here among the really good meteorologists. I mean, I'm a duck guy and a duck scientist that kind of leans into the meteorology a little bit, but good to have the experts here to tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Mike Brasher: I brought you in to make me feel comfortable among this group. So no worries there. I think we're going to jump right in here and we'll keep this casual. We'll have a, you know, we're live. And so we're going to just build off one another. And Mike, you've got tons of experience here. You're in the North. I'm in the South. We've got Chance. And Scott's sort of closer to that mid-latitude area. So we'll have fun with this and hopefully share a lot of information with our viewers and listeners also. So I'm going to go first to Chance. You've got some graphics. We want to put these graphics up, and you're going to sort of tell us what system we've been dealing with over the past few days, where we are right now. So what do we got, man?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, so it's definitely been a pretty wild system that we've been dealing with here pretty lately. I'm going to go ahead and skip ahead to the graphics that kind of want to highlight what's going to be up next in line. So a lot of pretty much mid latitudes like you were talking about pretty much from Kansas all the way back off eventually now to the East Coast, just saw a decent amount of snowfall and pretty much all precipitation. I mean, we saw freezing rain, sleet, rain and snow here in Missouri. And we're kind of looking ahead to this next system that's going to be making its way through as we head towards the second half of the week. So a lot of people back towards Texas going to be expecting to see some rain, even some possible snow as we have a low pressure system off to the north that's caused that cold front that's going to continue to slide. So we're gonna be watching that. And I know Scott's gonna be looking forward to this one. It's gonna be a busy one for him the next couple days. As we go a little bit further into this, this system's going to continue to move back off to the east. So this is a snapshot looking ahead into Friday. So the western half of the United States going to be looking a little bit drier for that note to start off closer towards the start of this weekend. But as we look off towards the second half of the week, the eastern half of the United States is going to be dealing with that low pressure system, which is going to be diving in. I know it's going to be bringing some snow back to Missouri and the Great Lake region going to be set up pretty heavily, and that's going to be lasting all the way back down towards the Carolinas. So a lot of Things are going to come from this. I'm sure there's going to be a pretty strong pushback off to the south because the same system is affecting the same area that was just covered by snowfall across much of the Midwest and Great Lake region. So this is going to be blanking us with snowfall and colder temperatures that will continue to push off to the east. So pretty much all the East Coast get ready. You're going to have another system coming back through. A lot of you guys going to be sealing the fate with this with pretty much a winter preset. So if you've had a little bit of rain lately, well, the snow is going to be coming unless you're back off to the far southeast, back towards Georgia, Alabama. Still looking like rain for you guys, even all the way down to Florida.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, so this is a pretty good one-two punch that we probably haven't had in quite some time, where we had that one system move through and drop some snow across that mid-latitude, and here we've got some more coming in on top of that. And I know Mike's going to have some fun talking about what all of this means in terms of what he's learned, what he knows about the different factors that contribute to those migration pushes throughout winter. I have a couple of questions already coming in here, and this was a good reminder for me to tell our viewers, be sure to to like, share, and subscribe from all of your favorite platforms, Ducks Unlimited accounts on your favorite platforms, to make sure you get alerted the next time we do one of these. Help us spread the word, help us build some sort of an audience around these. We want to bring this information to you, and you're the best source to help us get that message out there. From a precipitation standpoint, well, what I'll say here, we've got a couple of questions already that have come in. How's northern Missouri and west Kentucky? Now, it's my understanding that the north zone there in Missouri is already closed. Now, the goose season may still be going on. I'm not going to profess to know about all the regulations across all these different states. But I've got a question about northern Missouri, western Kentucky, and then Oklahoma. chance any read on temperatures through that sort of latitude here over the coming week? Is there going to be any open for any? I don't know if duck season is still open in those states. If it is, is it going to be, are they going to have any open water?

Chance Gotsch: So yeah, so the north and middle zone, we're split up in three zones here in Missouri, have just closed for duck season. We'll be through the end of I want to say I want to say the start of February is gooses and close across the region. I know a big thing here. If you guys have ever heard of Habitat flats or the Golden Triangle is what they call mid-Missouri. There's over a million Mallards at a time that could be between three WMAs. They've been loaded with ducks for probably last month across the season. They're holding close to a million in that area. So northern Missouri already should be starting to lock up pretty heavy. I know ponds across the region. I was driving in northern Missouri yesterday. Um, they're still open, but that's probably not gonna last more than 24 hours with these overnight lows towards zero degrees. So southern half the state has till the end of January 31st. Uh, they're gonna probably start locking up pretty soon here, too, and they'll be seeing possibly of a little bit of snow this next time. So northern Missouri locking up, probably gonna start to look towards fields. But even with additional snowfall you know that could be a little bit more of an issue for the near future at least towards the next two weeks where we're going to be able to cooler temperatures here so water probably going to be locking up with the next 24 to 48 hours if it hasn't already.

Mike Brasher: Scott I want to go to you now and ask give you an opportunity to to add to what Chance has introduced here and you know one of the things I want to want us to try to make sure that we cover here if we can as we think about describing these patterns there's our our colleagues and fellow waterfowl hunters out in the Pacific Flyway that are kind of in a different boat right now, so I don't want to forget about them. They're not experiencing this cold the way that the eastern two-thirds of the country is, I guess, so let's make sure we kind of talk about that as well. So, Scott, what can you add to our conversation here?

Skot Covert: Well, to your point in the Pacific Flyway, the folks there generally have had a winter that's characterized by well above normal temperatures. It's been warmer than it often is, given a 30-year average. And that doesn't look to be changing necessarily, with the exception of the upper Pacific Northwest, closer to that displaced jet stream. I think with Dr. Mike here as well, we may talk a little bit about La Niña, and some of those things are very characteristic, at least of a weaker La Niña. In terms of temperatures, in the Mississippi Flyway, probably central and off towards the East Coast. We're going to be cold for the next couple of weeks at least. We've had somewhat of a mild winter. I mean, a week or so ago, I hunted and I was slapping mosquitoes the whole time, sweating, trying to lose layers. That's changed, and it looks like this cold's probably gonna stay in place. Of course, we'll moderate a little bit, collectively speaking, across a good majority of the eastern two-thirds of the country, meaning by this weekend, temperatures are probably starting to climb back closer to normal, still probably falling shy of it by a few degrees. But it looks like there's gonna be more lobes of cold Arctic air be pushed down into the lower 48. So I think the last few weeks of the season probably aren't going to be as warm as they have been the first half.

Mike Brasher: One thing I want to sort of acknowledge here is that we've got a number of graphics in various PowerPoints and some of which you guys will share, some of which we have here. I'm going to rely on y'all to sort of cue us on when you want to share any of those. So Scott, Chance, I'll pause right now and ask if there are any of those graphics that we have that you want to show to sort of augment the supplement that the conversation we just had. So Scott.

Skot Covert: Yeah, if you want to pull up that animated map, what I did is I told the weather models, one of them specifically, but I think it's doing a pretty decent job this winter. Look at the entire northern hemisphere. So we're looking up in the Arctic, and you can see those greens, those pinks, that's going to be the coldest there. And every once in a while, you'll see a little lobe of it over the next seven to 10 days. It gets pinched off. and it pushes down into the lower 48 for the most part. Again, we're still looking at relatively warm temperatures along the West Coast, but the rest of us, we benefit from that cold Arctic air. You'll see a few brief periods of time, two, three, four days where we warm up before we get that next lobe of cold air to push down.

Mike Brasher: All right, so so chris leave Leave that animation up something weird just happened there. Okay There we go. So scott tell us what we're looking at here. This is a projection is is that yep Okay, animated projection. What is this? This is looking i'm trying to get oriented here Even we're not looking down from the top of the globe or is it sort of a flat globe?

Skot Covert: Yeah, a flattened globe. The center of the screen there is probably going to be near the pole, the North Pole. And of course, if you look towards the bottom of the screen there, you can see the United States. So this is the European model. And of course, there are many, and they all have strengths, they all have weaknesses. So it's not the gospel, it's not perfect. But at this range, looking at the next six to 10 days, what it's showing us is temperature at 850 millibars, which is Not at the surface where we are, so we're not talking ground-level temperatures, but just above the surface. And it does a pretty good job of showing us those temperatures where they're at and where those air masses are going to be moving. And it's looping over, though. It looks like that runs through, oh, probably the next week or so.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, that was the question I was going to follow up with, is the timeframe for that.

Skot Covert: Next week or so, there are a couple more graphics that's going to look six to ten days. And then we also have a three-week outlook, which should take us through the end of the month.

Mike Brasher: Okay, we'll get to those a little bit later on. I've got a question here about North Louisiana. Pacific Northwest. We're kind of cataloging those. Thank you for those. We'll come back to those. I want to continue on with this conversation here. We have some other things we want to discuss a little bit more maybe on precipitation. Chance, I think you've got some information there. I remember seeing a drought map. What I want to do now, though, is bring Dr. Mike Schummer into this. You, of all people in the waterfowl science profession, are probably going to geek out more over this conversation than anyone else. And so I want to get your reaction. You saw the animated model there of that. That's a polar vortex, right, that we've heard about, that kind of showing that clockwise circulation of that cold air at the poles. Your reaction, your level of excitement about all of this, Mike?

Mike Schummer: Well, our doc season is just about done up here. We're closed on the 12th. So we're happy to now send them South after we're finished up with them. So not a big problem, but yeah, we're in, these are like polar vortex kind of they're stretched polar vortex events. Right. And I think we're in like, we, we, we didn't have many last year at all. Everybody remembers how bad last season was. And I think we're into our fifth one now. And it actually looks to be an extended event. And I think that's what Scott's going to show later is like that three to four week really shows kind of a continued cold. And especially in the eastern North America, the polar vortex really influences kind of like maybe a little bit of central flyway, but Mississippi flyway east a lot of the time as it as it pours out of the Arctic. And we've had more of those events this year. When we show some graphics later, you'll see those peaks and in cold that happened that did send birds south on several occasions, better than last year. Still not great, but better than last year. So yeah, it's really shaping up, I think, to be, I'd say, a much better season than last year. Again, it couldn't be much worse than last year, though, Mike.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I agree. And some of the graphs that you're going to show later on, weather severity index graphs, will really sort of accentuate exactly how much of a struggle last year was in terms of getting those weather events, those weather systems to move birds based on our understanding of that. Do we have Chris Isaac, our producer here, do we have the video that Mike shared showing the amount of snowfall that he's getting up there? Just kind of add some additional content here, let people see. Now, is this what people are gonna see, Mike? Is this lake effect that we're seeing? This is Jack's Reef, New York, home office of the Foul Weather Podcast, right? So tell us what we're seeing. Just this morning.

Mike Schummer: Yeah, so we got about six inches since sunrise or so. My wife got up at five, went to the gym, and she came home, and she's Canadian, and like four hours north of Toronto, Canadian. And she's like, the roads are pretty squirrely. And for her to say that in a Subaru all-wheel drive vehicle, you know, pretty rough. So we'll have the plow out this afternoon. I'll push the driveway out again. I don't know why I didn't pull the truck in the garage, but we're, you know, we're looking at ice fishing season now and we don't always get this last year. You know, you'll see on the graphics later last year, we did not get this. We had, we easily had Mallards. We shot, right. We had pintails. We shot through the end of season. So this is a different beast this year. And it's I, I appreciate it as somebody from the North country, uh, grew up in Western New York, you know, South of Buffalo and in a snow belt there, and then moved around the country and then ended up in a snow belt near, near Syracuse. And, uh, I love my weather. So, you know, bring it on.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. It's the way it's supposed to be. I mean, this is, this is the way it's supposed to be in winter. If you're a duck Conner, I mean, even, even. Even the timing here is better than what we've had a few recent years. If you're a southern duck hunter, because you think about last year, we did have some cold air that made its way. Maybe it was mid-January, but now we're talking late December or, well, early January when we're getting this. So that helps if you're wanting to make the most of that final month of the season down here. That's a good thing, and it's going to stay cold as we're going to see. At least that's the forecast. Okay, so… What about precipitation? Chance, are we ready to talk about that? From a snowfall standpoint, from a rainfall standpoint, we've got even some freezing rain, some sleet, those types of things, hazardous conditions down around where we are here in Memphis and a little bit south. It's going to get kind of sketchy. What do we know in terms of precipitation and how it's changed over the long term as we want to talk about drought here eventually?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah. So just kind of looking at that, I'll kind of start off with a snow cover map that I have pulled up here, kind of telling a little bit of that story. We are doing all right here across much of the eastern half. United States. There are some areas that are still dealing with some bad drought. I know the Mountain West is an area that's still been seeing some extreme drought, which is a level five out of five there. But the snow cover and snowpack is definitely looking to help us. Like I said, we just had that system going from Kansas all the way back off to the east, back towards Washington there. This is an area that's going to get hit with the same amount. So with precipitation aspects, we're going to be looking to see a little bit more as we head a little bit more into the forecast. I want to go ahead and go a little bit further out to the precipitation outlook. So this is 6 to 10 days away. You probably just saw that system and you're like, well, you know, we're having a system as we head off into thursday and friday. But this snapshots a little bit further out. So yes, we're gonna have a little bit of snow. And also when you think about snow, it's really not that much in terms of rain. So we do rates with snowfall, it'll be anywhere from one inch of rain will equal about 10 inches of snow or one inch equals 12 inches of snow. So that actually boils down to melting and getting back down into the actual earth and collectives for holding water such as impoundments and stuff like that. It's beneficial but it's not really substantial. So the eastern half of the United States going to be looking a little bit drier than average with that little snapshot of 6 to 10 days away. The West Coast is going to be seeing that. I know they have a system that's going to be coming in later into this weekend that's going to be bringing some rain. But the overall snapshot, a little bit further out from what we just saw with the forecast I showed earlier, looking a little bit drier. And then we go even further out, 8 to 14 days away. And these conditions off to the west are still looking a little bit on the drier side. So if you have any issues back towards California with water right now, where you're going to be hunting, It doesn't look like you're getting too much relief. Now, when you start looking back towards the Rockies, that area is going to be a little bit wetter than average. That's kind of how we speak to precipitation outlooks. It's either near average, above or below, and we are into our drier months into the winter just because the atmosphere doesn't really hold as much water as it does during the summer because the dew points are a lot lower. The eastern coast there off to the northeast back towards New York, that area is going to be looking a tad bit drier than average. and I'll kind of finish out here with the latest drought monitor that we're looking at across the United States. So the central region looking a lot better than what we saw just a few short months ago. A little bit of drought concerns back there in western Texas. That's probably the area that really speaks the most to the level five out of five drought that we're seeing. Also back off towards a northern Great Plains. That's an area that's had some longstanding drought and it looks like they could get a little bit of relief. You saw in that 8 to 14 day away precip outlook. So possibly see a little bit of relief there, but really it's not going to be anything substantial that probably alleviate that drought and back towards Vegas there. That's an area that we're going to continue to watch, but these are half United States looking a lot better overall. And with this system, like I said, snowfall helps the East Coast. Definitely going to be seeing a lot more of that, but you really need a lot more snow than you think to actually get you out of those drought conditions just because the way it transfers over when it actually melts.

Mike Brasher: Chance, I haven't kept up with the drought monitor here over the past couple of months, as I probably should have. I'm a bit surprised at the level of drought that we're seeing there in some parts of California. Maybe the systems that they've been receiving here over the past couple of months were farther north, looking up there at the northern part of the state, and I don't see any drought indicators there. But down in, maybe I'm looking at the Southern Central Valley there with some of that yellow shows up. Have those areas, kind of the Southern half of California, missed some of those weather systems that have come in over the past several weeks?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah. So I've been I've been kind of looking at a I guess the United States view every now and then just with my role at the station to see if there's anything crazy going on. And I feel like most of these systems I've seen back off to the coast or starting off to the northwest there. And that's where the moisture is just kind of pushing in and kind of yeah pretty much hitting it square in the nose. What you said they haven't seen as much the last several weeks. It's kind of been confined to that northern portion which has helped out there but definitely the southeastern region down there definitely struggling a little bit more.

Mike Brasher: I'm gonna maybe put you on the spot here, and if you need to call in Scott, that's fine too, but are there any systems coming in to the West Coast here over the next couple of weeks, whether we're talking Pacific Northwest or the Central Pacific Coast, that are gonna kind of mix things up, so to speak, for waterfowl and waterfowl hunters out there in that place?

Chance Gotsch: So off the spot, so looking at least into this weekend, I guess this would be the best snapshot. So I don't see anything that's too impressive currently with the system and with the extended outlooks that we're looking at here. I'll go ahead and throw that back up briefly here. It doesn't look like there's too much that's expected within that period to give them substantial rainfall. I mean, Friday, you see that system that's off to the north back towards Canada there. Looks like it's going to be affecting the same region that's been getting hit lately and is doing all right. So it doesn't look like there's too much relief for the Southern California area and back towards Vegas.

Mike Brasher: Okay.

Skot Covert: Scott, anything to add? Well, you know, what sticks out on that drought map, you look to the prairies just in terms of a breeding habitat, as we're probably going to start to see that migration back north soon. It's a little bit concerning when you look at the Dakotas like that. And of course, we can't see into Canada with this specific drought monitor, but you can presume that if you're seeing that level of drought there in the northern part of the United States, that there's probably going to be some similar conditions there as well.

Mike Brasher: Okay. I got a ton of questions in my head right now. I'll see how many of them I get to. We've got some other questions coming in about Georgia, Alabama. We've kind of talked about the Pacific Flyways, and sure enough, true to form, as soon as we do that, we get people wanting to talk about the Southeastern US. That's the way it goes. We're trying to cover it all. So Georgia, Alabama, Florida, we're going to kind of cover that here in a bit. We'll make sure we do so. North Louisiana is going to fall into that category. This is maybe a good thing to ask here. This morning here in Memphis, it was I think mid-20s, low-20s, mid-20s. If we rewind the clock, maybe four or five days, they were projecting, projections were for low temperatures in the teens, maybe even flirting with single digits, but we're not seeing that, and the new forecast are not showing as cold a weather as we thought about, and so that kind of has implications for some of what people are asking about here. How cold is it gonna get in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, those areas? Who wants to take that chance? I'm gonna just, I'll say your name first. If you want to throw it to Scott, do so.

Chance Gotsch: I'll, I'll let Scott handle it. I think he's a little bit more versed on temperatures for this one.

Skot Covert: Okay. Yeah, so I think the key takeaway there, number one, is you start to see these extremes being put out two, three weeks in advance. And I would just caution folks, don't take the bait necessarily when you start to see those maps with bright colors. And look, I love them too, but often things get dialed in and become a bit more reasonable as the actual window begins to close. And I think that's what's happened here. Overall, I think in that part of the country that you just mentioned, we're still going to see below average temperatures. So that's going to look a little bit different whether you're talking Alabama or Florida or Georgia. But whatever you consider normal for this time of the year, whatever the Almanac would say the average is, we're likely trending at least a few degrees below that for the next two to three weeks. I feel pretty confident in saying that. How low do those temperatures go? Well, at a two-week range, you're only looking at anomalies. You're going to be tough, hard-pressed to actually dial in on the specifics. But I think at least for the end of the month, we're probably not going to see many warm days or warmer than average days.

Mike Brasher: What about wind? Any type of wind coming in with this next system or anything maybe after that? Because you get to a point where it gets cold and stays cold for a few days, then those birds figure it out and you need something else to kind of shake them up. And so wind is a duck hunter's best friend. Anything wind-wise worth talking about?

Skot Covert: I think as we continue to see this relatively active pattern with lobes of that cold air, the polar vortex, I do think we'll probably continue to see a decent amount of wind. And generally speaking, when we get those cold blasts, of course, it's going to be out of the north-northwest, but you got to keep in mind that that's not going to last more than three or four or five days. In fact, here in Arkansas, we'll probably end up having a southerly wind over the next couple of days, between probably Wednesday, Thursday, before it shifts back out of the north. So there is going to be some variation in those winds. You've just got to time it just right based off of what systems are coming through. Staying active for the next couple of weeks, I do think you're probably going to have some variation.

Mike Brasher: Scott, I'm also dying to ask if that's a little dog blanket carrier behind you, the red and black thing. Do you have a dog? Please tell me you got a dog in the back seat.

Skot Covert: There is not a dog in the backseat, but that is exactly what that is.

Mike Brasher: Oh, okay. All right. Well, dang it. We'd have that dog make an appearance on the Waterfowl Weather Live if you had it. Next time.

Skot Covert: Next time.

Mike Brasher: Next time. Okay, so now I've got a question about North Texas and North Carolina. I think people are playing games with us just seeing how many places they can have us hit on a map. So, it's good though. It's great. We'd love to have it. And so one thing that I will say is for kind of up-to-date reports from the field in all of these different places. This is a good time for me to remind people to check out the Ducks Unlimited migration map. This is also going to provide a good segue to Mike here in just a moment. Ducks.org forward slash migration map. That's our very own waterfowl migration map where people can post reports of what they're seeing, what they have seen. And we encourage folks to be active participants of that community. So go check that out. That is those are observations of like the here and now. And Mike, I want to bring you in now and talk about some of the work that you do forecasting where ducks are likely to migrate to in the coming days in response to forthcoming weather, temperature, snow, rain, those types of things. Folks, I want you to take a moment. I mentioned your host of the Fowlweather podcast, folks can go, well, tell us the website where they can go to learn more, because there's a whole ton of scientific information behind what you're going to talk about, and the studies that you've done to sort of build this better understanding of the factors responsible for migration, when they're to occur, et cetera, et cetera. So tell us about that, and then lead us through what all of this means from a waterfowl migration and hunter standpoint.

Mike Schummer: In short, so we will direct folks to the webpage as well. So we've been working on this along with colleagues since about 2008 when I was at Mississippi State University working with Rick Kaminski, Heath Hagey, James Calicut, Brian Davis, all those folks, good waterfall folks there. But wanted to really understand what were the drivers of duck migration, weather-wise, and if that weather had changed as interpreted by Mallard so we could understand if The numbers of mallards coming to the Mississippi, Louisville Valley, and into the Deep South, Mid-South, and Deep South were changing based on population largely or were changing based on weather. And so we connected waterfowl survey data in Missouri, which they have a very high quality data set with nearby weather stations so we could track you know, what types of weather were causing increases or decreases in the numbers of ducks at those locations. And when we say ducks, I mean, everybody knows we mean mallards, and then there's also other ducks. Those other ducks. But we did get to the other ducks eventually when we went to, I ended up in Ontario. working up there with Birds Canada and Longpoint Waterfall, and we had a graduate student pick away at all the migration models for the other dabbling duck species as well. But what it came down to is what best explained that increase and then decrease in ducks in any one location was how cold was it on a given day, how much snow was there on the ground, how many days in a row it had been cold, and then how much snow, what was the actual, or sorry, how many days in a row had there been snow on the ground. So it added up to a number that was a cumulative weather severity index. So it wasn't just how the weather was that day, but all the things that would affect whether a duck can actually reach food in a wetland or in a field, as well as the things that would cause them to expend energy, which is cold and snow and things that affect them that way. All right.

Mike Brasher: Give us the lowdown. Where are ducks going to be going? How quick are they going to get there? When do people need to be heading out to the marsh? And as I think Scott figured out this morning, You got to have open water, too. I think he encountered some frozen, some hard water, as Dr. Scott Stevens liked to say. So, what are the signals for duck migration in response to the current system and what may be on the horizon? And cue us up for the graphics. I know we've got some graphs, that type of stuff. Those are comparisons, but go ahead.

Mike Schummer: Yeah, no, I've got some graphs that kind of lay out what this year looks like compared to last year, kind of from north to south. Devils Lake, you know, down the south, a little bit of east, a little bit of west stuff. Just to give people a feel, and also a graphic that kind of shows maybe what happens when it gets cold. It doesn't immediately mean you're going to have good duck hunting, right? Conditions can get bad enough that ducks do sit still. It makes more sense sometimes for them to sit still in those conditions. than move. So the graphics you'll see are coming from the Foulweather podcast. It's Foulweather.co. And if people want to know more about the weather severity index without going into it here, you can go to that Foulweather.co and click on our migration page. And there's a video on there. It's a year old. It's a little, let's say, prototype-ish, but it gets the point across for what the weather severity index is. And we produce a weekly prediction of duck migration. So we don't do reports of where ducks are. We tell you where the mathematical models say that ducks are going to end up during the next week. And we produce that every Monday morning from the beginning of October to the end of January. So it's a tall task to crunch all those numbers each week and then record the podcast on Sunday and then get it out by Monday morning for everybody. Maybe we walk through the graphics here a little bit, if folks are good with that now, and start with Devil's Lake. And that'll kind of give us a feel for where we're at, I think, in the season, if that's okay, Mike?

Mike Brasher: Yeah, absolutely. Kind of orient folks to the graph here. There's two lines on it that corresponds to the two different years. Current year is the blue, and orange is last year. So, yeah, like you said, you've got a number of these. So, orient us, take it away.

Mike Schummer: Yeah, so actually I was going to start with the Des Moines, Iowa one, but we can do this one first. That's fine. I switched things up on myself. No, we got Des Moines. We got Des Moines. Yeah, so Des Moines is a really good indicator here. And so what you're looking at is on the up-down axis or the x-axis or y-axis is the weather severity index. So the higher up that blue or orange line goes, the worse the weather is, kind of colder, snowier. in general. And actually Des Moines hasn't had much snow this year. So those lines that you're seeing are pretty much just cold temperatures. But when we hit that level of seven on the index and people always ask me, what is that? I'm like, oh my goodness, it's a combination of things. It can either be cold one day, It can be cold, slightly cold for several days. It can be cold and snow. This year, it's just cold. But what you see last year in that orange line is it never, ever gets above that threshold where we would expect mallards to start decreasing at a location until recently, like into early January here, right?

Mike Brasher: And so Mike, when you say decreasing at a location, we're talking about migrating southward.

Mike Schummer: Yep. Yeah, that's the expectation.

Mike Brasher: That's what we… Or migrating to a different location. Could be slightly east-west type thing, but yeah, generally out of that area.

Mike Schummer: It could. Out of that area, right. So we expect that… We presume that that is a southern migration from that location. It's not north in all likelihood because it's just colder further north of there. So what we see are… understand that when it goes above that mallard migration threshold, that doesn't mean mallards are gone. It just means from one point in time to the next, they're decreasing in abundance and presumably moving south. So what we see in 24-25 for Des Moines, about mid-Iowa-ish, is three little bumps, right, where these birds are at least moving a little better than they were before. And I think the folks in Missouri would attest to this as you know, a little better mallard migration. But what we see is like the big cold thing coming is pretty similar to where it was, you know, last year. Um, if we want to go to the devil's lake one, this one's really interesting. It shows something slightly different. So we have that huge cold front and giant snow that came through. I always, I talk about this cause my wife hunts as well. And she'd been out in, uh, Montana on a mule deer hunt, and she was stuck in Williston, North Dakota in an airport with her parents, my in-laws, for like two days trying to get out of there. And that was a pretty substantial system. But if you look at that graph afterwards, it warms right up. And so yeah, did a bunch of birds leave for sure, and they ended up down in Iowa, but then they just stuck there and they didn't get a lot further south than like Illinois River Valley. Um, but then, you know, if you look at the orange afterwards, it kind of got a little funky, but nothing that would really make all those mallards move out. Now the blue line this year from our calculations, I just truncated it. I stopped it because it went off the rails, right? It got cold enough up there that those birds just froze out. So, um, that's a, that's a kind of real quick breakdown there. Um, Later on, I guess we can walk through other locations if you want. East Coast and Kansas is a little different. There's a lot of nuance in this stuff that goes into the forecast each week.

Mike Brasher: I want to pause right here. I want to give Scott and Chance an opportunity to ask you any questions. They're both duck hunters. They're meteorologists. They get all of this stuff on the weather side of it. And I know Scott and you and Mike have chatted before on a podcast episode, but any questions for Mike from your perspective? Oh, you're muted, I think. What do we got going there? Yeah, you're muted, maybe?

Skot Covert: Yeah, my fault. I'm sorry. I'm really curious about how you calculate where we're at in the season and how that may or may not play a role in whether ducks are likely to move with the weather. Late in the season, it might take a little bit more to push those birds towards the south. Selfishly, I'm wondering if all those Missouri birds that Chance has been hunting are finally going to come south with this blast of cold air, or do they say, you know what, it's early to mid-January, we're just going to ride this out because it's going to warm right back up pretty soon?

Mike Schummer: Yeah, so that's an awesome question, and we get a lot of that. And I'll show you a weather whiplash figure later on of right in Jack's Reef here near the farm where we hunted and really killed birds because it didn't totally lock up. They went to rivers, they went to lakes, and then when it warmed back up, they bounced right in. And so that's mostly mallards now is all that we have left, and they'll hang on. I mean, it'll take five days. of freezing them out to get them out of Dodge, right? And that's why it's temperature and snow and the extended, you know, cumulative effects of that over, over time. But the question to, you know, will ducks migrate this late in the season? And the answer to that is yes, because if you look at the numbers of ducks. I just did a analysis of this for last week's podcast. It's on there. If you look at Mississippi's ducks over time, you know, when it gets cold, they'll even move in the last two weeks of January into Mississippi. at least the numbers increase, right? So if that's a local reshuffling, but it surely looks like the birds come down. Like last year, when it got cold late, a lot of folks said, well, the ducks never really moved. But the data, the numbers of ducks actually show that, yeah, they did make a movement, right? Are they less apt to make that movement as we move into the second week of January and you know towards February? Certainly, because at some point those days are getting longer and the only thing those ducks have to do at some point is go back north. So they're only coming as far south as they have to. So there is some of that like when you saw that huge weather severity index peak in North Dakota early, those ducks probably hung on a little longer up there kind of waiting for that thing to wane because the likelihood of that cold staying forever was low. North Dakota in Thanksgiving time when that happens, it's done, right? It's generally over with. So yeah, that's a really cool question. And these birds definitely react differently seasonally based on photo period as well.

Mike Brasher: Alright, let's move on, Mike. Let's see here. I'm checking my questions here. Oh, somebody's asking why there are so many teal left in Montana. I'm assuming they're talking about green wings. Who wants to speculate at that? I mean, number one, I don't know how many teal we're talking about. Mike, let's assume they're talking about green-winged teal. They're a fascinating bird from sort of an evolutionary standpoint. They're small, but they have a diverse diet. So, speak to that a little bit. Why might green wings, assuming they're talking about green wings, still be hanging on at that northern latitude?

Mike Schummer: Yeah, so there's two things going on there. If it's dry and they can still get to corn, they field feed on the high plains of Texas, which is not always the warmest place in the world, right? All winter long. And they make these flights out to cornfields. And they do that pretty much everywhere. For a small bird, they have a pretty diverse diet. They find corn really well. And it might fuel that little jet engine they have. The other thing that's going on, I mean I had a guy the other day that says we must be right at peak mallard migration with like 100% of our birds here now in central New York. And all the marshes are frozen and he's on the Finger Lakes and it concentrates birds. So there is sometimes the perception that there's a lot of birds around. But the reality is sometimes you're just in a location that is concentrated birds. And I would say at the time that fellow was talking about, you know, where duck migration was at in New York is we probably only had about 20 percent of our mallards left here. 80 percent of them were south of us. But those 20 percent were super concentrated and super killable. So there is some perception that goes and I never want to tell anybody they're wrong. But perception definitely goes into all this stuff as well.

Mike Brasher: For sure. Well, thanks for taking a stab at that. And let's see, I want to move on more quite another, I guess, next thing here for you, Mike. When are the days like this? January 7th, we should be expecting some movement of mallards and any other remaining birds up in those mid and northern latitude areas to be migrating out of there now, right? What's next? And let's talk about North Texas. What can you say about that? Let's talk about the East Coast. What did hunters need to know from your weather severity index estimation on when they need to be getting excited?

Mike Schummer: So it really varies by location. Folks talked about the Pacific being dry and warm right now. That is true, and people are struggling out there. Early, early on, you know, the early ducks, I call them the wimpy ducks, not the mallards that hold out for late. But they should have had a pretty good movement earlier. They were cooler than, you know, they were kind of the bright spot, like October, November. But since then, they've gone really dull, and probably ducks are where they're going to be, I'd say, for the last two, two and a half weeks and are pretty stale. Uh, everybody else with this cold that, you know, chance and Scott talked about on the podcast last week, I said it this way. It was like, if you have a week to take off, I would go duck hunting, you know, but you obviously have to pick your battles. You got to know your locations. You got to know your rainfall, your wind, you still got to scout. But with that much cold pushing down, these ducks don't just go hide in some duck house or something. They got to move to get away from this, right? When it gets cold, water freezes. And when it gets cold, it falls out of the sky as snow. And none of those things make a habitable place for a duck. So right now, it's looking pretty good. But if you want to put, can we put up that Great Bend, Kansas figure? Because that's a little different than some other places that we've seen. Yeah, if we look at this one right like that, that is, you know, getting a little bit further west, and we just haven't seen that cold that is hit elsewhere. I mean Kansas pretty far south, but we're almost on pace. for about the time ducks migrated last year, that blue lines this year, it's a little bit earlier, but it's not, it's not much. So, you know, North Texas folks, if, you know, I've heard this, they're like, we got some early ducks, but we don't have our Mallards. And so I'd expect them to be coming, you know, along with this front. And the hope is that, you know, and the expectation is this polar vortex, the stretch polar vortex kind of continues throughout throughout January. So, Texas folks, I think, should be ready for it coming up. And that should be just about all ducks. I think redheads, if they've been hanging north, should hit the Texas coast. Pintails should hit the Texas coast. The coastal people should do really well as well.

Mike Brasher: Hey, Chris, let's throw up that pintail graph. This will show sort of the difference, the calculation for a different group of birds. Do you have that one? Okay, it came in a separate email there. So, oh well. Mike, do you have that? Do you have Andy?

Mike Schummer: That's, yeah, that should be right at the end. There should be like a line for Pentiles. I think that's actually for Jack's Reef in this part of the world. It should be at the bottom of that.

Mike Brasher: Oh, we got it. Okay, found it. There we go. Okay.

Mike Schummer: Yeah. So this is the home office, right? So this is right here in Syracuse. And so, you know, that line, the firm Allard's that would have been well, you know, well higher than that, where the threshold is, if you look for pintails on there, they're, you know, they're, they're still relatively large duck, they'll field feed. So it's not too far off, but they leave before the Mallards. And if you look at the orange line last year, that was weather whiplash for a pintail. It went back up and down, but it was never enough to really make him leave. Our local refuge counted pintails all winter long. We had thousands of pintails that never left the latitude of New York last year. And if you look at the seasons, the seasons are on the bottom on those dark lines. That's this year's season. It's not much, much different. The early portion is for our early ducks and our late portion is for our mallards. But you see, you know, this year by those blue lines, we don't have pintails here this year. They are gone. They have moved on, and we are pretty much left with Mallards and Black Ducks at this point. So the Pintails, and you know, there's other, a lot of your other ducks are different than that. Your Shovelers, your Wigeon, your Gadwall kind of fall on their Gadwall a little bit later. But those are the birds that are really probably on this cold front. I would say moving to what I call the Deep South and coastal regions. I really think folks in coastal Louisiana all the way across to you know, Florida up to South Carolina should be ready for those early ducks. I don't think they're going to see large pushes of mallards. That would take, you know, something much greater as far as extreme cold than this, just because mallards are tough. Um, but those folks should be seeing a really good push on this in this next week. Um, as I said, like if you have somehow have time left after Christmas and new years or your calendars reset, um, I'd keep my eye on the skies and try to take some days if you can this week.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, a lot of these southern states still have 35-40% of their season remaining, and so again, good timing. Everywhere from North Carolina to Texas, yeah, this is an opportunity for you to get excited about having some new birds, but like you said, Mike, Your best day is going to be right around the time that they are just getting there. Once they settle in and kind of figure out the hazardous landscapes, unless we get additional weather to kind of mix things up, you're going to be kind of hard pressed once they figure out that pattern. And they will do that regardless of which geography they land in. So we all know that. I have a comment coming in here saying that Mississippi is getting better every day in terms of the numbers of birds that they're seeing. That's what we would expect. Here we are in January, building to sort of their historical average peak. This may be one of those years, Mike, where we get additional movements of birds into the state of Mississippi in this early mid-January period. Now, I want to talk about what's to come. It's cold out right now. It's going to stay cold. And Scott, I think we have a couple of graphics for you that have these sort of forecast, two different figures. And so tell us what we're going to be looking at and cue us up. And then maybe a few other things after that we'll get to before we close it out.

Skot Covert: Sure. So, in the short term, and I know there's a question about North Texas, we're going to have a pretty impactful winter storm. North Texas very well sees a good mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and perhaps some decent accumulation. So, that could throw a monkey wrench into some plans out there as well. Temperature-wise, over the next few days, yeah, we're staying cooler, probably through the next 6 to 10 days. That's going to be the first map we'll look at. It's It's a lower 48 map. I think it should say 6 to 10 day range up at the top. And what it's going to show us is, while we're not expecting another intrusion of really cold Arctic air, the Arctic air that is here probably is going to be hanging out for the next several days. And that's going to keep things on the cool side. Beyond that, we can look Towards the end of the month, probably right through, I think it's going to take you through January 30th, 31st. And that's going to show pretty much a pretty similar picture, a good chunk of the area, a good chunk of the country, probably staying somewhat below average. We probably will get another swing of some cold Arctic air to reinforce the air mass that's already in place. And so I think below average is really going to be the name of the game.

Mike Brasher: So Scott, I want to kind of make sure we orient correctly. So Chris, go back to that first graphic. I might have messed you up. So this is 8 to 14 day. So we have two graphs or two maps here. One is 8 to 14. That's from January 14th to the 20th, right?

Skot Covert: Okay, so my apologies. I was saying 6 to 10, but I guess I should say 8 to 14. But 8 to 14 gives us a little bit better of a picture. And you can see a large majority of us, especially in the central Mississippi flyways, likely going to be somewhat below average. Even stronger signals from the Carolinas through parts of Georgia and Florida there.

Mike Brasher: Okay, so now let's go to that map that'll take us through to the end of the end of January, end of duck season. It's very convenient for them to do that, to kind of time it to the end. We appreciate that.

Skot Covert: Of course. And I think that map there, that three to four week temperature outlook is actually really symbolic of a really weak La Nina. But when we first did our very first Waterfowl Weather podcast, we dove into the details of what a La Nina could look like. We're not technically at the threshold for the government to officially declare the La Niña, but for all practical purposes, we're so close to it, it's a weak La Niña, just not technically on paper. And when you see a setup, a pattern like that, it's pretty symbolic. It looks like it'll be a short-lived La Niña, though, probably done by March.

Mike Brasher: Okay, and Chris, do we have that graph that I pulled from that other presentation showing that the sea surface temperatures, dramatic decrease here? Can I speak to that? Mike shared a presentation, a NOAA presentation. with us kind of leading up to this and wondering if we wanted to talk about that. Do you see it? Do you get it, Chris? Yeah, okay. So, Mike, I'm going to kind of cue you up here and then Chance, if you want to follow him up with any additional kind of commentary. But Mike, tell us what we're looking at here.

Mike Schummer: Yeah, I think it's just switching gears. These are sea surface temperatures in the Pacific that are, you know, if they're warmer than normal, an anomaly warmer than normal for a long enough period of time, that's an El Nino. And cooler than normal is a La Nina. And those produce, without going into detail, Very often relatively predictable patterns of temperature and precipitation across North America, one of which really matters to ducks under La Niña, and that is the potential for a cold and wet prairie, and Canadian prairie specifically, which I think we've seen a little bit more of. There's been six to eight inches in Lake Saskatoon. Manitoba of snow. Some of that is just evaporated, let's say, over just dry cold that's occurred and blown away because there's wind up in the prairies. But I think we're in a better situation. It does look like it's going to manifest itself maybe like January February March ish I mean Scott can maybe correct me it's it's a late winter type thing but the hope from my perspective. Is that brings some real you know the people in the prairies when you say hey it's going to be a blizzard in February March they freak out I mean it is. It's wicked bad up there when it happens. You can get three inches of snow and 20 foot drifts. So it gets pretty ridiculous. But from a duck perspective, the cold air will lock the moisture in the soil. which is really important because then when it thaws, the moisture dust doesn't go into the soil. It actually runs into the potholes, which is what we need. We need pothole regeneration at this point. So the hope from this La Nina is that there's some kind of signal for the ducks. And I'm optimistic. We forecast it way back in August, so I hate being wrong about these long-term things. But I'm not technically a climatologist or meteorologist, so I don't think I get crucified as much for sticking my neck out on things.

Mike Brasher: Thank you, Mike. Chance, I want to bring you in here, because the very first time that we met with you and had you on an episode, we talked about this La Nina pattern that was being forecast. Have you been continuing to keep an eye on it?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, kind of about pretty much what they both were talking about. I mean, it definitely was a slowdown from what we expected. A little bit of a warming, actually, in some of those sea surface temperatures within the last month. But we are getting really close to that threshold, just like Scott was talking about, which You know, I was going to touch on the exact point, too. It's going to be staying a little bit cooler, cooler for that north, which means that we're going to be holding on to that until we head off into enzo neutral, which is going to be a little bit later towards March and during the spring and summer doesn't matter as much for the enzo cycle. This is more something that affects us in the winter. So that is just going to be something that's going to be hoping to keep us on the cooler side and lock in that moisture. But also something I want to kind of touch on is And I know Scott, this is something that he likes a lot is the reverse thaw. If you get anything, this isn't saying we are cooler than average for the rest of January for much of the mid latitudes into the southeast. But that's not saying that there's not going to be some days where we do have a little bit of a warm up, just saying that those days that we If you have that, are going to be very scarce. So if you are going to be hunting maybe a little bit of a thaw, you need to get out during that time because it's not going to be most likely lasting with the lending yield conditions that we're looking at as we head into the rest of the season.

Mike Brasher: Great information, fellas. Um, we're right. We're, we're approaching an hour. Uh, so this is an important time for me to remind folks to, to thank folks for tuning in. Thank you for the comments. I do have a question here for you, Mike, one that, that came in. Um, I'll get to that here in a second. But thanks, folks, for tuning in. Thank you for the comments. Be sure to like, share, subscribe to Ducks Unlimited on all of our platforms. I don't know if we're going to be doing another one of these for the end of the season. We'll see how it goes. We'll see what kind of weather systems shape up between now and the end of the season. But definitely something that we want to continue next year. We've had great response to this. Certainly appreciate our guests for making this what it is. And, Mike, a question that came in for you. Are those threshold Um, well, they say maps, but I'm guessing they're talking about the graphs. I don't think we've shown any threshold maps unless maybe you reference that. The question was, are the threshold maps available publicly? So let's just take that either way, either any kind of maps or graphs that you have.

Mike Schummer: So they are not, and the intent, you know, I interpret them, there's other things that go into these, right, Mike? So wind direction, I talk a lot about local flooding, reshuffling, and winds locally for people. So we're looking at maybe putting up a platform next year. that that helps with kind of these types of things. But to put some of this stuff up and then, you know, there's there's other nuances to it. So we try to do the interpretation of them and then give that report each week on the on the podcast. But, you know, it could be common. I think maybe one thing we might end with is there's that one last figure that kind of has the arrows on it. If we want to show that, because that speaks a lot to what Scott was just saying, too. So this is the local home farm marshes that we hunt, and those purple lines are when we hunted and the numbers of ducks we killed on each day. And so that's six ducks, six ducks, one duck, six ducks, four ducks. And if you look at when we went hunting, We didn't go when it was cold. We hunted the thaw, right? So we let stuff lock up. This is going to happen. This is kind of what Chance and Scott were talking about, is that we might have a little back and forth at that southern latitude. You might get cold and get ice for a few days. But when you warm back up, those ducks that sat still are going to go out looking for food. And if you get a rain, a weather rain system that reshuffles birds with that, there's a lot of good opportunity there. So don't feel like you have to go on the coldest days. Let the birds tell you. kind of when to go to because when it gets cold sometimes they just sit still and wait for it. So just I think take that as a little bit of a you know a lesson on what the season you know might hold. And yeah we're working on getting some of these up. These you know these it's easier for me just to run the numbers then also to produce maps and graphs and get them on a Web page. We're, we're, we're, we're not a big operation. Let's just go with that.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, for sure. Well, we, we appreciate the expertise, the unique expertise that you bring to this conversation and many others like it. I want to kind of go around here. So Mr. Producer, Chris, can you bring up Scott on the big screen here? Scott, I want to say thank you to you for joining. Um, for, yeah, for joining the, uh, joining the show from the road. You have a passenger with you. We have to say thank you to that person as well. Does that, does that person want to remain anonymous or do you want to give them kind of credit for the assist?

Skot Covert: Oh, credit for the assist. Hey, this is Alex Stewart. He's the sports director at our television station. He grew up hunting the Pacific Flyway out in California. So he's being introduced to the Mississippi Flyway.

Mike Brasher: Okay. So you said Alex? Alex Stewart. So Alex's task, Alex's task here is to find us a meteorologist hunter from the Pacific Flyway to join to be part of this kind of going forward. That's one of the things that we're still struggling to find. So Alex, use your connections out there, man.

Alex Stewart: I'll do my best, I'll look for you, but I gotta tell you, where I was hunting, not a lot of ducks, so I don't know how much help that was.

Mike Brasher: Okay, well, any effort we appreciate. Let's see, Chance, appreciate you joining from, I think you told me it was zero degrees in Columbia, Missouri. Where's Chance? Can we get him up there? There we go, so Chance, thanks a bunch, man.

Chance Gotsch: Thank you, thank you guys for giving the opportunity to talk about two things I love the most.

Mike Brasher: Did you get out and go hunting much this year?

Chance Gotsch: Uh, I would say moderately, not as much as in the past. Uh, but I know Missouri has been holding an incredible amount of ducks, uh, towards mid Missouri and just to the Northwest. Uh, so Scott, it's going to be coming here pretty soon here. We're locking up probably within the next 24 hours, Arkansas, I'll get ready.

Mike Brasher: Awesome, love to hear that.

Chance Gotsch: We appreciate that.

Mike Brasher: Love to hear that. And then, Dr. Mike Schummer, a final thank you to you. We'll catch up with you sometime in the future. Thanks to everybody again. Check out Ducks Unlimited's migration map, submit your reports, help other people know what you're seeing and how things are unfolding during this very exciting time in response to these weather systems. That's ducks.org slash migration map. And love for you to be part of that community. Like, share, subscribe. Ducks Unlimited on all of your platforms. Get outside, go hunting, enjoy this final month of the season for those of you that still have it. Happy hunting, y'all.