Holy bat cave, Buffalo!

BUFFALO, Mo. – On summer nights, if you look at the radar at just the right time, you might see an unusual sight showing up near Buffalo, Missouri. To the untrained eye, it looks like a quick burst of rain, one that comes and goes in a blink of an eye. But the burst isn’t rain, it’s bats.

“The Buffalo bats show up every summer on radar,” says Marvel Cave Guide Corey Taylor. As a cave guide, Taylor is very familiar with bats. He is also a weather aficionado.

The signature that shows up on radar is known as a “roost ring.” Roost rings occur when the radar beam detects thousands of birds taking off from their roosting sites. This often happens around dawn and dusk. However, in this case, it’s not a bird, or a plane … or Superman … it’s bats.

“While Marvel has lots of bats, there are never enough to show up on radar,” explains Taylor.

Marvel Cave, the cave that started it all for Silver Dollar City, is massive. Marvel boasts the largest cave entry room in the United States with a 20-story-tall Cathedral Room. Large, but not big enough to have enough bats for roost rings.

So how big is this Buffalo bat cave? Taylor says he doesn’t know. His friend, an old meteorologist from the area, kept it a secret, “He wasn’t allowed to say exactly where they were coming from in order to protect the bats.”

Liberty, an energy and water company, owns land near Buffalo. In April of 2023, they posted on social media :

“Fun fact: Liberty property in Buffalo, Mo. is home to a quarry that is host to one of approximately 50 maternal bat caves in Missouri. During the spring, the endangered gray bats migrate to the cave in colonies so large that they show up on the National Weather Service’s radar.”

Buffalo, Missouri.

Home of the bison and the bats.

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