Simulated weather.
Real wind history does not exist yet, so this page is running on an invented field — plausible
fronts marching south at real-world speeds. Everything downstream is the real model: the same
push index, front detection and flight simulation you would get from live data. Only the weather is
made up. It is replaced automatically by the next real build.
Dove Arrival WatchDuck Arrival WatchCentral Flyway
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Where do you hunt?
Type a town anywhere in the Central Flyway — Texas up through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas,
New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. You get the forecast for that ground — its own cold fronts,
its own arrival days — not a guess borrowed from somewhere nearby.
The whole system, moving
Cold fronts sweep south, and behind them winter freezes the water up north. Ducks leave when
their water locks up, fly south at night on the north wind, and land at dawn. The dotted line is the freeze line;
grey specks are snow on the ground; warm dots are new ducks landing that morning.
Cold fronts sweep south down the plains. Birds leave when one reaches them, ride the
north wind while it holds, and sit down when it quits. Press play and watch it happen.
What you're watching
The freeze comes first. Watch the dotted line creep south, then the dots bloom below it a night
or two later.
This duck forecast is untested — built from published duck research,
graded every morning below. Sizes are relative, not counts.
What you're watching
The front arrives first. Watch the bright edge sweep down, then the warm dots
bloom behind it a day or two later. That gap is the whole reason this thing exists.
Nothing is drawn between the dots. The flight model
has no east-west position for a bird in the air, so we don't invent one. The front line joins
places where a crossing was actually detected. Arrival sizes are relative, not counts.
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Best morning
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How many
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Mostly
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Freeze line
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How the duck forecast works
Ducks leave when their water up north freezes or snows over — we track that with the
weather severity index ducks are known to answer to (Schummer et al. 2010).
They fly at night, leaving about 45 minutes after sunset, and only when the wind ~1,500 ft up is behind
them, it's dry, and it isn't socked in.
One night carries them 300–500+ miles — farther the harder the cold came.
So the freeze line moving south is the thing to watch. New birds land at dawn, a night or two behind it.
All ducks, by morning
New ducks landing near you at dawn, every species together, split by group. Faded bars are the last
week, for context; dashed lines are cold fronts reaching you. Open a group below to see each species.
By group and species
Tap a group to open it. Each species is forecast on its own — they leave on different
triggers — and sized against its own big push, so a bar means the same thing for every bird.
Go this morning
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How many
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Coming from
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Days of notice
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How this works
Doves don't leave on a schedule — they go when a cold front gives them a north wind to ride.
So we watch four stretches of country upstream of you, out to 620 miles north.
Birds ride that wind while it holds — up to about 200 miles in a day — and sit down when it quits.
The front outruns the birds. Cool air reaches you first; they land a day or two behind it. That gap is the whole point.
The front, then the birds
Dashed line is the weather. Bars are the birds. They are not the same day.
Day by day at your fields
Conditions at your exact coordinates, pulled live from the same European model the forecast runs on. North wind in bold — that's post-front air.
Doves turn into the wind to land, so set up with it at your back and they work toward you.
What's happening upstream
North at the top, the way the country lies. Darker means birds were being pushed harder out of there that day.
Cold fronts we're tracking
Each front is clocked as it crosses the bands, so its speed is measured rather than assumed.
How sure comes from 31 separate weather model runs and how much they disagree.
Are the birds actually moving?
Real dove countsReal duck counts from Cornell's
eBird at 46 spots across the Central Flyway, every morning. Each spot is compared only to its own last week — a quiet
Montana county isn't judged against busy Dallas. Glowing means more dovesducks
than usual there; dark means fewer. Duck counting began Oct 4, so the history is short for now.A migration shows up as a glow that slides south over days.
DovesDucks near you
Across the Central Flyway
more dovesducks than usual for that spotfewerno counts that dayCircles are 50 km eBird search areas at true size; each day is a 3-day average. One spot flickers — trust patterns across several.
North to south, by latitude
How much to trust this
The weather half has been checked against eleven years of records. The bird half is now graded every
morning against what eBird birders counted — that scorecard is below.
Checked and working
The weather severity index reproduces the published worked example exactly (Schummer et al. 2010)
Wind is read at a real height above the ground — never from a level that is underground on the High Plains
Snow depth matches an independent source to the centimetre
Still guesswork
Every threshold comes from studies in the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways — none was fit here
How many ducks are up north — the model only knows relative numbers
Teal and puddle-duck triggers are rougher than the mallard one
Whether it has predicted a single duck — duck counting only began Oct 4
Checked and working
Front speeds — — typical across — fronts, 2015–2025
About 7 big continent-wide fronts a season, which matches a real dove season
Same answer on any machine — no randomness hiding in it
Still guesswork
How far a dove really covers on a given tailwind — that number sets the arrival day
How fast the birds up north run out over a season
Strength labels aren't calibrated — read them as bigger-vs-smaller, not as counts
White-winged doves — the forecast counts them the same as mourning doves, but how far and how fast they travel on a front comes from mourning-dove studies; white-wing movement is barely studied. The scorecard grades against both together, so a gap would show up there
Whether any of this has ever correctly predicted a single bird — one promising day so far (Collin County, Sep 22)
The scorecard
Each forecast is checked 1–3 days later against
dove (mourning and white-winged together)duck counts at the
nearest eBird circle, with collared doves (which don't migrate) as the check on birdwatcher effort. It has to beat
the calendar, not just chance. It needs at least three weeks of record before it can pass; until then, read the forecast as unproven.
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Every morning's forecast is saved before anyone knows how it turned out, so the record can't be tidied up later.
Sunrise and sunset are astronomy; shooting hours and season dates belong to your state agency, not to us.
Weather: contains modified ECMWF open data (CC BY 4.0),
with past days and local conditions via Open-Meteo.
Bird counts: eBird, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.