We're officially in severe weather season, and that'll mean that you'll start to hear the word "cap" more and more. You might be wondering what that word means, or you might not care, either way, it affects everyone.
The cap, like the Ozone, is a layer in the atmosphere, but instead of protecting us from solar storms, it protects us from severe thunderstorms. It is a layer of warm air that prevents thunderstorms from forming. You might have seen thunderstorms in the forecast by either looking at your phone's weather app or watching TV, and when the time for storms comes, there aren't any. You might be thinking that the meteorologists at the TV Station or on Twitter are unqualified for their jobs, but it's not them, it's the cap.
Think of the cap as a lid covering boiling water. The stronger the lid, the more force it takes to push past it. Thunderstorms have a fairly easy time forming when there was a weak cap, but when there's a strong cap in place, thunderstorms need to have more power to form. That is why the storms that break the strong cap tend to be a bigger deal than storms that break weaker caps.
If you find yourself looking at box soundings, as one does, this is what the cap would look like.