OsdIlatioEis 
pressure system off Florida in mid-May that 
shunted hundreds of pelagic migrants shore- 
ward, north to North Carolina. 
The eastern Midwest had mostly a warm, 
wet spring. March temperatures were above 
average in the southern Great Lakes states, 
and precipitation was copious along the 
lakeshores in particular, making it the third 
wettest March on record in Chicago. In the 
western Midwest, March was cooler, and Min- 
nesota and eastern Iowa had a very soggy 
month, with precipitation measured at almost 
triple the norm in some areas. March snows 
and rains for Wisconsin and Michigan were 
normal, as were March temperatures, but 
April and May were cooler-than-average 
months in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A late 
snowstorm hit central Iowa 4-5 April. April 
showers were well above average in Illinois 
and Indiana, in some places double the norm, 
with a swath of much-above-normal precipi- 
tation stretching from northern Missouri 
through Illinois into central Indiana; rains in 
Minnesota, northwestern Iowa, northwestern 
Wisconsin, and eastern Ohio were below nor- 
mal in April. From Illinois to Missouri, early 
April was much colder than normal, but the 
latter half of the month warmed quickly, so 
that temperatures for the month were “aver- 
age” across most of the region, though it was 
a month of wild extremes for many locations. 
Across a very broad front, a stark warm-up 
24-27 April brought Neotropical migrants 
northward by the truckload, some of them 
very early or in record numbers for the 
month. The month of May was near normal 
over much of the Midwest but much cooler 
than usual (5-8° F) in northwestern Minneso- 
ta. A cold snap 17-18 May brought record- 
cold temperatures to the southern Midwest, 
but a record warm-up came 19-21 May, with 
monthly records set at Gaylord, Minnesota — 
97° F on 20 May — and at Big Bay, Michigan 
(94° F) the next day. The progress of spring 
migration varied accordingly. Precipitation in 
the Midwest in May was half of normal in 
northwestern Iowa, central Minnesota, and 
northwestern Wisconsin and twice normal in 
eastern Kentucky and south of the confluence 
of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Southern 
Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin, and up- 
per Michigan were dry in May, extending the 
drought in those areas. Farther south, in Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, March was a bit warmer 
and rather dry, but the rest of the spring rela- 
tively rainier than average, with mostly nor- 
mal temperatures. 
In the northern and western Gulf coast 
states, the spring was warm and mostly wet, 
though areas well inland, such as Huntsville, 
Alabama, had below-average precipitation in 
March but caught up with April and May 
showers. While Alabama enjoyed several pro- 
ductive fallouts, steady southerly winds over 
Louisiana were less favorable for coastal bird- 
ing in April and May, which also had below- 
normal precipitation totals. Drought also per- 
sisted in eastern Texas: the Edwards Plateau 
and South Texas Plains were in “exceptional” 
drought through May, in fact, despite several 
productive April storms. Extensive hurricane 
damage to Gulf coastal habitats continues to 
dismay birds and birders alike, from Texas to 
Florida. 
The Great Plains got plain walloped, one 
way or the other. In the north, March contin- 
ued bitterly cold, with few respites from sub- 
freezing and often subzero temperatures, and 
heavy snows continued. Bismarck, North 
Dakota’s 101 inches (257 cm) of snow for the 
season nearly broke the old record. Some 
lakes remained frozen until a late April warm- 
up, and the thaw only made spring flooding 
worse. In addition to problems along the Red 
River, “the Missouri River at Bismarck flood- 
ed some areas for the first time since Garrison 
Dam was built in the 1950s,” according to re- 
gional editor Ron Martin. The extended peri- 
od of flooding put a severe strain on many 
communities in North Dakota, western Min- 
nesota, and southern Manitoba, but many of 
the levees held. May, especially in the south- 
ern Great Plains, was marked by weak precip- 
itation patterns, with sizeable areas of the re- 
gion receiving less than 70% of normal pre- 
cipitation and even larger swaths getting less 
than half of normal; several locations report- 
ed the driest May on record. Eastern Nebras- 
ka (and later the Panhandle), north-central 
Kansas, and parts of South Dakota were hard- 
est hit by the paucity of precipitation. 
The Mountain West was a mosaic of weath- 
er patterns, as usual. Except for northern Ida- 
ho, western Montana, and parts of Wyoming, 
most of the region had a drier March than 
normal. Overall, the spring in Colorado and 
Wyoming was a little warmer than usual and 
essentially normal in terms of precipitation. 
Drought conditions gradually lessened, to the 
point that the “Drought Monitor” maps 
looked relatively blank — better than they had 
since the late 1990s in some respects. The 
U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook released 21 
May anticipated that drought conditions in 
Colorado and Wyoming would improve still 
more through August. In April, interior areas 
of the Great Basin states, the Wasatch, parts of 
the central and Northern Rockies, and the 
plains of Montana, along with isolated pock- 
ets of southern Arizona, were wetter than 
normal. Western Montana was memorably 
both wetter and cooler than usual, and Boze- 
man reported 126 cm of snowfall in April — 
“the most ever reported there in any month,” 
according to regional editor David Trochlell. 
Great Falls, Montana tied its all-time snowiest 
April ever, with 90 cm. Parts of eastern Mon- 
tana were downright cold in early spring, as 
much as 6° F below normal in March, for in- 
stance. The Southwest, by contrast, had one 
of its warmest spring seasons in 115 years of 
record keeping. The Great Basin states were 
likewise warm: Las Vegas, Nevada's May was 
the warmest on record, and many sites in 
southeastern California and southern Arizona 
had their second-warmest Mays. 
Alaska’s spring started out cool; March was 
the twenty-eighth coolest since records began 
in 1918, with temperatures 3° F below the 
1971-2000 average. April bucked the trend, 
ending up 0.4° F above average. Fairbanks 
tied an all-time record on 29 April with 74° F 
and broke the record the next day with 76°. 
Thede Tobish notes that the “slow-melting, 
heavy winter snowpack [...] persisted well 
into early May, at which time the weather 
abruptly turned mild and unseasonably warm 
through the period.” Farther south, tempera- 
tures were mostly below normal in the north- 
ern portion of the United States’ West Coast 
and above normal in the southern half, espe- 
cially southern California. Parts of the Pacific 
Northwest were up to 5° F cooler than usual 
in March: Seattle recorded its coolest March 
in 33 years and its fifteenth cooler-than-nor- 
mal month out of the past 19 months. The 
Northern California editorial team reports 
that conditions were “cool and dry from 
March into May,” though a short heat spell 
20-21 April brought all-time records to the 
San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas, with 
temperatures reaching as high as 104° F at 
King City. Hot weather more typical of sum- 
mer arrived in late May, producing early thun- 
derstorms east of the Sierra Nevada. In 
VOLUME 63 (2009) • NUMBER 3 
371 
