The Angry Beebe Birds On Radar

The greens and yellows you see on the above image is not rain, but I am pretty confident it is a flock of birds taking off at 10:55 PM from Beebe on New Year's Eve. As you saw in the video on an earlier blog, the flock takes off to the SE. This "flare" or "bird takeoff" happens 4 times, between 9PM and 1AM. The birds can also be seen well using another radar product called Spectrum Width. The below image is Spectrum Width.

Notice the bright reds and oranges. Spectrum width shows the differences in velocities in each pixel on the radar. In other words, as birds zing back and forth in different directions/velocities from each other, radar shows a higher Spectrum Width.

I then called and talked to the Beebe Police department to see where the highest concentration of birds were found. The below image is Spectrum Width overlayed on Google Earth. The highest concentration of birds was south of Center Street and East of 167. I'd guess it would be somewhere around the "367" sign,  located in the red/orange area.

Remember, the bright orange and red areas are areas with objects in the air, moving at variables speeds, and directions. Sure looks like birds to me...

But WHY did they fall back down to Earth after taking off? Craig Rickert has a good theory that makes sense. What if fireworks scared them and that's why they took off at night... THEN another round of fireworks goes off in the middle of the flying flock and disrupts them to the point that they can't fly.... then they fall to the Earth and die of "Blunt Force Trauma" as the veterinarians said today.That's actually not a bad theory. Think about the large rockets at firework tents. Now, think of one of them going off in the middle of a VERY dense flock of birds. I could see that causing problems for the birds. I can actually see me as a kid doing this on purpose to make the birds fly... just saying.

Who knows... I'm not sure why they fell from the sky, but I do believe they can be seen on radar 4 distinct times, fleeing from Beebe.

Cue X Files music...

Ryan

EDIT: Apparently the docs say they died before hitting the ground. Meteorologist Brad Panovich may have a good theory. He says they may have collided while fleeing...

Or these theories: