Well, as expected, we've hit a few snags. All of us are here at Mark's place waiting for Mark. We got the van and we have a few problems with it. The biggest problem is it has winter tires and for those of you who don't know: winter tires do very very badly in rain, as in hydroplaning. We've called every Hertz we can in southern Ontario and the U.S. and no one has minivans. We managed to get a hold of someone at Pearson airport and he managed to get us a minivan. We'll have to pick it up in the next couple of hours. Mark has run out to get some last minute things and still has to pack when he gets home. After he gets the new van we need to hook up all the equipment which is very time consuming. We still hope to leave tonight for convenience but we may have to leave early in the morning. Most of us are hoping to leave tonight though. To add insult to injury, it's about 10C and raining outside! 

Other than that we have all the equipment we need so as soon as we get the new van we'll be on our way!

So the trip is back on. We'll be departing late tomorrow or very early on Monday. The ensembles and weather models have been, well, awful. They've been flip-flopping back and forth. There will be chase-able storms but at this point, no real textbook set ups are in the forecast. Let's hope things work out! I can't post too much right now because there's a lot of electronic / equipment stuff I need to finish as well as pack for the trip. Tomorrow we will be meeting Mark at his place with the rental vehicle and we'll be packing it and hooking up the electronics. Based on tomorrow's weather models we'll decide whether to leave tomorrow night or Monday morning. Will post as soon as I get a chance. I'll also tweet as we set up including some pictures of the vehicles and hooking up the equipment so if you can, follow me on Twitter: @daynavettese

This last week has been a very difficult week for my family and I. The plan was to leave this weekend on the storm chasing trip. However, on May 5, my mother passed away after battling cancer for just over a year. Of course I decided not to go on the trip. However, Mark ended up delaying the trip due to weather-reasons as well. The trip will still be happening and the plan is to possibly leave next weekend.

Needless to say, I've been neglecting this website during this hard time. In the coming week I will be back to updating it.

We're getting closer and closer to storm chasing! The rental vehicle has been booked which is fantastic. Tried to get across the border yesterday to grab the mobile hot spot but it being a long weekend and that fact that the Canadian dollar is high, the wait to get across was 3 hours.

Three hour wait to get across the border to Buffalo, NY,

It's hard sitting here and seeing all the tornadoes occurring in the U.S. I keep getting people saying, "Why aren't you out there now?!" Well, for one, it's hard to pick-up-and-leave at anytime when you have a job with set hours. I have to book vacation time ahead of time to make sure my shifts are covered.  Secondly, when renting a vehicle, you need to give rough dates to the rental company so last minute again is hard to achieve. Still, May is the month for tornadoes in the U.S. so we'll have to see how it pans out. There is some concern of ENSO shifting from La Nina to neutral and the effects that will have on the weather patterns. The last thing we want is a massive ridge setting up and bright, sunny skies for a week. Unless I was somewhere in the Carribbean of course ... As of right now, some extremely long range models are suggesting a "lull" in severe weather for the first week of May then picking back up again.  If this is the case we should be down just in time for things to pick back up again. Here's hoping!

Well May is now slowly creeping into our long range forecast weather models.  So far the pattern has been very progressive with monster-trough after monster-trough.  April has been a record breaking months for tornadoes and chasers can only hope May will be the same.  Of course, we also hope that the amount of fatal tornadoes in kept as low as possible.  The recent 3-day outbreak in the U.S. has been devastating and is not at all what chasers want to encounter.  The ultimate tornado is beautiful, photogenic tornado in the middle of a field, not tearing through a town.

We're getting close a there's still a lot to do.  The laptop stand will be finished most likely tomorrow or the next day.  Then we need to bring it to Mark's and install the amplifier on it.  We have a list of things we need to pick up as well but hey, at least we're organized!  Brad and I will be day-tripping it to Buffalo to pick up the mobile hotspot.  Other than that we're set to go!