We've delayed as long as we could. This year is proving to be quite the anomaly with respect to climate and weather. Below normal severe weather in the United States is basically our biggest challenge. Though this spells good news to those ravaged by tornadoes, rain, hail, lightning and wind every year, it spells disaster for storm chasers.

This upcoming week holds a couple of days with marginal potential. Our chase group has to be back by June 4 so we've decided to leave this week regardless of how amazing or terrible this week is just so we can get a solid 2 - 3 weeks of chasing in. So like I said before, there are a couple of days that hold some potential for severe weather. We will be leaving early Tuesday morning and begin our drive to Tornado Alley. It looks as though we will be chasing without some of our fellow chase friends for about a week. They fortunately have a bit more flexibility with work and other commitments that they can be out longer into June. 

Leading up to this trip we did all the right things - from a climate standpoint. We booked off almost the entire month of May and first week of June thinking: this guarantees us some storms. But not every year can be an active year and unfortunately 2012 has, so far, shaped up to be dull. Not to say that there weren't some large events this year because there have been. That being said, we're not nearly as close to the number of tornadoes the U.S. normally sees by this time in May.

So we'll head down Tuesday morning and begin our chase journey. The ensembles are holding some promise towards the end of May so we're hoping for that to pan out. For a detailed and in depth discussion on the forecasting, check out Brad's blog - he's pretty much the brains of this operation. He details all the issues and outlooks of this season.

Also, if you have the chance, check out The Weather Network's news at :13 and :43 past each hour. They've been airing a story today on our hail guards on the chase vehicle. Hopefully you can check it out. I'll try to get a copy of it and get it up on the website as soon as I can. In the mean time, check out the pictures I've uploaded of the hail guards (Hail Guards gallery) or check out the slide show below:

So keep checking back! Hopefully we'll have some great storm pictures, videos and stories to share with you in the coming weeks.