Oct 8th, 2017: Weather Radar

Wednesday the weather people in Denver saw a 70 mile wide “cloud” on their radar screens, headed northwest.



Experience taught them it wasn’t a weather cloud and maybe it was a bird migration.
But why would birds be moving northwest when they should be moving south now?
Further investigation proved it was a 70 mile wide cloud of Painted Lady Butterflies.



It boggles my poor little pea brain trying to picture a cloud of these delicate beasties big enough and thick enough to show up
on weather radar. Now if it were NSA radar I would understand and expect each to have a serial number.
But these Painted Ladies only live from two to four weeks and winter in the southwest or northern Mexico. I should think it's
time for them to skedaddle.
I wonder if Trump's wall is keeping them from going home?

link

The thing about going home, unlike birds and mammals, with butterflies it generally isn't the same insect that completes the migration. Consider the Milkweed. It was recently discovered that the European Painted Ladies (which actually originate in Morocco) breed and produce offspring (and die) as they move further north and east with their foodplant coming into season during the year before finally, and amazingly, the sixth generation then makes the long journey back to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and it all starts over.

At an hour-and-a-half this might be a bit long but it is fascinating: