Thats all she wrote for 09

Well, it looks like the 2009 season is about wrapped up. There will be some isolated chances in the summer, but at this point tornadoes become too isolated to really plan for a chase. The main areas are also way too far to go last minute, the northern plains and even Canada are beautiful, but harder for me to reach from here in Chicago.

There can be some local chases though, as summer time usually puts us here in the midwest at risk for derechos. NW flow events can also happen and weve had some pretty significant tornadoes during the summer on NW flow days.

So, 2009 will go down as a slow and frustrating year for most. I however had a pretty good year, my best yet actually. My new aggressive approach paid off as I broke a few milestones this year including largest hail, first daytime tornado photo as well as a new record tornado count with 5

None of the tornadoes were significant though, and most were from farther away than I would prefer, but a view is a view and Im glad I was able to see the ones I saw.

I also set a new record number of chases with 16

There were allot of weekend opportunities too so I only used 7 days off work to chase. So if next season is active I will have plenty of time stocked piled to use.

It seemed every setup this year only featured one or 2 storms though, so this made the convergences even bigger than ever. I was able to avoid most of it though thanks to the new truck. I expanded the network even more and met some new faces, and made some more friends.

The death ridge in May was the biggest kill for the season, but that emphasizes why I jump on early season setups, I will never bank my whole season off a statistic. I have the best luck in June anyways.

So thats a quick bout of my thoughts on the 2009 season. More will come in the future. I have 4 chase logs still to work on, some site updates to attend to and more. So I guess as far as chase related work goes, the season never ends!