For all us volatility traders, checking the VIX futures term structure is something we all do several times a day. A solid source for the information is vixcentral.com, and one of the many useful metrics we're looking for there is the level of M1:M2 VIX futures contango/backwardation. (I wrote a full article explaining this mechanism here if you need a refresher)
However, the raw contango/backwardation value alone may be misleading, especially around expiration as I will show in this article. Here's an example to build off:
VIX futures term structure: From Monday April 15th, 2019