Bust!  That's the only way to describe today.  As we set out that morning, we knew there was a good chance we could bust, as the cap in our target area was pretty stout looking.  However, the potential for violent tornadoes was quite high if the cap was managed to be broken.  It takes a special set of conditions for violent tornadoes to occur.  Several different ingredients have to come together at the right time.  On this day, everything was in place for tornadoes to be much stronger/violent than the "average" tornado.  We had to at least take a chance, as you never know how many times a season you'll get the opportunity to chase a setup like this.  

 

Jeremy Ludin and I left the QC late that morning, and quickly set off for our initial target of Lamoni Iowa.  After we passed through Des Moines, it became apparent that we'd have to go a little farther southwest than Lamoni, as the warm front was moving a little slower to the north than expected.  This would take us into northwest Missouri.  A few elevated supercells had formed in southern Iowa, and were dropping large hail.  We encountered a pretty strong storm near Osceola Iowa, where we hit a brief period of ping-pong ball sized hail.  It hailed so much that the interstate was briefly covered in hail.  It looked like a snow shower had passed through.  I was busy managing the video camera, so unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of this.  Little did we know that this was the only action we'd see this day.  

 

We pushed south into northern Missouri.  As we punched through the warm front conditions went from cool/drizzly/cloudy, to sunny/warm/humid within a 10 mile stretch.  That was definitely a good feeling.  

 

We ended up near Albany Missouri, where we figured would be just to the east of where storms could initiate.  Some cumulus towers did build nicely for a time, but after a few hours of sitting around in the fading daylight, we knew the cap was holding.  It was sort of a painful bust, but we knew there was a chance that surface based storms might not pop.  The potential of this day was too big to ignore.  The last thing you want to happen is to blow off a chase in fear that you will cap bust, only to watch supercells blow up on radar out where you'd have been if you'd have gone chasing.  I think that would be far worse than actually busting in the target area.  At least we got a nice sun tan that day LOL.

 

 

Here's the only picture I took from this day.  This is an elevated (not surface-based) storm near Des Moines.