With just over 3 days remaining, the final push to prepare, sort and pack for the trip is underway.

There have already been multiple tornado outbreaks of varying scales in the southern plains.

Cape Forecast – Sunday May 19th 2019

As much as I hate looking at operational model runs for convective events days to weeks in advance, the GFS, CMC and ECMWF have been in general agreement showing a very active and prolonged multi-day severe weather episode unfolding. It’s a repeating pattern, one after the other back and forth from west to east until the end of the month before ridging begins building in.

While this storm forecast is important, a more immediate and pressing matter to deal with is the clothing forecast for the drive down. Silly as this may sound many storm chasers, especially those coming from Northern climates tend to dress inappropriately, either wearing too much, too little or not dawning transitional clothing. It’s easy to assume it’ll be hot at the final destination but the weather on the way there is often cool and unsettled.

The GFS 2M temperature forecast for the afternoon of Friday May 17th 2019

So for the first leg of the journey Friday it looks like spring wear, once we get deeper into Illinois we’ll finally transition into summer like weather as far as heat and humidity go.

After the dreary spring weather here in Southern Ontario and a painful lack of warm fronts, I’m ready for some sunshine and heat!