Well over a month has elapsed since my last post. I look at the date of that post, April 1, and think, Right. April Fool, everybody. It sure fooled me.
My exuberant expectations for this storm season, particularly compared to last year’s, have fallen so far short that they’d need to climb a step ladder just to be upside-down. Last year by this time, I’d at least gotten in two productive chases, one of them spectacular and the other decent. This year, nada. I didn’t think it was possible to have a worse chase season than 2012, but 2013 is demonstrating just how a wrong a man can be.
Now, I know what everyone says: you can’t judge the latter part of a season by its early part. I believe that. The past has proved how dramatically things can change. Chase seasons that started out crappy suddenly shaped up and started cranking out some great setups. I hope that proves true with this one. As it stands, my traditional target date of May 22, nigh sacred to me for the great chases it has provided, has been consistently flatlining on the GFS. That long-range model has me gazing wistfully at its the far, far end, willing for a shadow of hope to show up at 384 hours and remain hopeful–a nice, robust trough that survives successive runs and moves through the timeline into the Plains, where–you’ll say I’m dreaming–it actually overlays moisture and instability.
There’s actually such a shadow lurking in this morning’s GFSM. I don’t trust it, no sir-ree, not at all. Yet I hope it will show better integrity than its predecessors. Regardless, I’m crossing my fingers for late May and June.
As for this blog, its inactivity is due a depressing lack of anything stormy to write about. Oh, yeah, there was the history-making April flood that put a number of Michigan communities underwater and came within inches of overflowing the floodwalls in downtown Grand Rapids. I heard of a golf course on the southwest side of town that was under four feet of water. That’s not something you see every day around here.
So I made a point of going out and snapping some photos in my own neck of the woods along the Thornapple and Coldwater rivers. The 84th Street dam on the Thornapple was like a giant firehose, the jewel-like Coldwater Park was underwater, and a couple miles further east, vast acres of wooded floodplain had opened up to exploration by canoe. It was something to see, but I didn’t much feel like writing about it.
Fortunately, when the weather refuses to cooperate, music keeps me occupied. Last Thursday, Big Band Nouveau debuted at The B.O.B. in downtown Grand Rapids. We played our butts off and enjoyed an enthusiastic reception. I see great prospects for this band.
More immediately, I’ve been working on a video tutorial on circular breathing. In fact, I shot some video yesterday and uploaded it last night to YouTube, with every intention of posting it on Stormhorn.com today. But in reviewing it this morning, I realized that it wasn’t up to snuff. So I deleted it from YouTube. I need to do another video session before I can post.
In other words, everything you’ve just read is really a substitute for the post I had planned, featuring the video tutorial. That post is in the works, so consider this a heads-up, particularly if you’re interested in learning circular breathing.
That’s all for now. A full day of editing a client’s manuscript awaits me, and I’ve got to get to it. Sayonara.
