Henry Streby of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues discovered that golden-winged warblers take off from their expected locations more than 24 hours before storms hit. In this case, the storm in question produced tornadoes that killed at least 35 people.
"The most curious finding is that the birds left long before the storm arrived," said Streby. "At the same time that meteorologists on The Weather Channel were telling us this storm was headed in our direction, the birds were apparently already packing their bags and evacuating the area.