All quiet on the western front...

Except at 2, 4, and 6 PM (not AM, of course).

After a lovely day of touring, we woke up to a disappointing weather forecast: convection was unlikely in our target region (SD/ND/MT) because the atmosphere was too capped. "Capping" is almost a literal description...a cap means that there is a layer of (relatively) warm air above the surface that inhibits convection (like a lid on a pot). The warmer the air, the stronger the cap. Some capping is good because it keeps storms from going early (when conditions are not necessarily conducive to supercells) and it also precludes a gazillion (wow-no red spelling underline!) storms from forming at once. Usually (well, on a good supercell day!) as the day progresses, the cap erodes allowing for storms to form where there is strong forcing. The alternate scenario is that you get a bad sunburn (hence, you should were a cap. Ha? Ha?). Well, the latter scenario transpired. Fortunately, we never left the hotel so we took the opportunity to look over our data from the previous missions (and nap). It looked good--except the lack of the meganado (spell check caught this one).

Back to Nebraska!