Remember those endless road trips as a kid when the most exciting thing was how many padiddles you saw? Well, WeatherBug, a weather-tracking software, has taken the road trip to a new level with its latest marketing inititive, Storm Chase 2005. The chase team consists of a pair of meteorologists, one teacher and one WeatherBug customer. Last Sunday, the storm chasers—who are looking for tornadoes in the Midwest—began a week-long quest for wild weather. WeatherBug users can track the team’s progress throughout the week as they blog about their experiences. Among weather watchers, there’s a definite “fascination with tornadoes,” according to Alyce Menton, director of corporate marketing at the client, based in Gaithersburg, Md. So far, the group has yet to encounter even a quasi-threatening rain storm. “This is the time of year where tornadoes are most likely, but you never know,” says Menton.

—Posted by Lisa van der Pool