Season Recap
Moths will continue to be present for the remainder of the year, but their numbers are dwindling fast. We had our last central Oklahoma moth night on October 2, one of the Oklahoma BioBlitz activities. I thought I would provide a little recap of the season with our species counts, the weather, and the moon phase for each of our moth nights held this year. The weather is the temperature and wind speed reported at 9 pm on the date indicated. Generally we begin at sunset and stop around midnight, though on the best nights we stay a little later. All moth nights were held at the Thunderbird Chapel in east Norman (Cleveland County), with the exception of the National Moth Week event at Beavers Bend State Park.
April 7: 53 species - temp 73 F, wind 6 mph, Full (100%)
April 20: 68 species - 63 F, 3 mph, Waning (4%)
April 29: 58 species - 60 F, 5 mph, Waxing (41%)
May 18: 121 species - 73 F, 5 mph, Waning (12%)
May 30: 129 species - 72 F, 6 mph, Waxing (60%)
June 23: 114 species - 79 F, 6 mph, Waxing (9%)
July 18: 128 species - 78 F, 1 mph, Waning (3%) - Beavers Bend State Park
July 21: 124 species - 84 F, 6 mph, Waxing (2%)
Aug 17: 115 species - 80 F, 2 mph, Waning (2%)
Sep 3: 147 species - 79 F, 5 mph, Waning (97%)
Sep 16: 102 species - 71 F, 5 mph, New (0%)
Oct 2: 32 species - 60 F, 7 mph, Waning (99%)
Weather observations are from the Norman mesonet site, and Broken Bow for the Beavers Bend SP night.
This is a small data set, but I don't see that moon phase played much of a role in the number of species found. From past experience I believe that wind is a factor, so I avoided breezy nights as much as possible this year. I'm guessing that any of our windier nights during the April to October timeframe would have yielded noticeably fewer species that other nights that time of year. It's clear that "peak season" is mid-May through mid-September. Also, it appears that numbers drop off more quickly in the Fall than the ramp up in the Spring.
