There's no hope in sight... both the GFS and ECMWF hint at the crest of the ridge breaking down slightly in about a week as a trough rounds the top of it, but it only flattens out slightly. I am starting to think we are done completely. I really no better than to say that, but as far as major tornado outbreaks go I really do think we're done. You'll always get a tornado here and there with northwest flow aloft setups, but as far as deep digging troughs in the plains go, we're done. I'm sure a trough or two will still dig deep enough to bring a few decent tornado days to the Dakotas, so that and hurricane season are the only glimmers of light on the horizon.

It is amazing how every year by mid June I am totally burned out on chasing and I want it to be over, but I know that as soon as it is I will miss it again. The long drives and days of seeing nothing really wear on you through the spring, but even though it sucks ass most of the time I always miss it terribly as soon as it's over. Half of the fun of chasing for me is the anticipation. It's kind of weird since the whole goal of chasing is seeing tornadoes. I work my ass off to get on the right storm and to get close to a tornado, but the best moments in my mind are always of the drive out there or the boring hours spent standing in a parking lot looking over data on the laptop. I guess it's just because that is the time when you get to think ahead to what is going to happen that day. It is the time when I feel like all the work I've put into it is coming down to the wire and I have to get it right or fail. Unfortunately I haven't had a really good season where I felt like I nailed all the right storms since 2004 and 2005, but I honestly believe that is because I've gotten lazy since then. Next year I am going to get after it though. I used to average 20 tornadoes a season and I've dropped down from that in the last couple years. I swear that is ending this year.

Now, I guess it is time to start looking ahead to hurricane season. I'll still keep an eye on the tornado setups and obviously I'll post forecasts as warranted, but I plan on getting into the long range hurrricane forecasting this week and I will start posting on that soon. I really think this will be a big hurricane year. We are in a long term peak of hurricane activity, and despite ominous hurricane forecasts the last couple years we have been very slow since the 2005 season. Mother nature has a way of balancing out in the long run and I think we'll see that this year. I was always a big fan of the saying.... "what is average besides the mean of two extremes".