Getting closer...

Less than two weeks now until the "official" chase season begins for me, and already I am having the usual irrational fears about the overall weather pattern. Once again I contemplated going out there this weekend- but once again it looks like this situation falls just short of my criteria for a short-notice chase. For me to drive all the way out to the Plains by myself the situation has to be better than marginal or even pretty good- it has to be a virtual slam-dunk for tornadoes and/or awesome supercells. This past Friday would have met the criteria, but of course it was during my work week. There were some incredible supercells- check out this and this near Patricia, TX
This storm did not come without a price however, evidently quite a few chasers had this happen to their vehicles- the second year in a row that storms somewhere close to Lubbock in early May did a number on a lot of chaser transportation.

Anyway, back to the upcoming chase- I am getting a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about the overall weather pattern as it pertains to chasing in May- a lot of the operational forecast models and ensembles are showing a less than stellar pattern for producing the type of supercells I am after on a chase. This spring so far has been characterized by a lot of blockiness in the atmosphere- with persistent troughiness in the eastern U.S. What you really like to see is a SW flow aloft over the Plains, and right now there is little sign of that in the long-range models. Luckily my vacation is 12-13 days away, and it seems at least feasible and perhaps likely than this upcoming bad pattern will change to something more to my liking by then, but I cannot stop my fretting about it, even though my rational side tells me to chill out and just ignore the long range progs until my chase is less than a week away. But I know that will not happen.