9 scary images of shelf clouds
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Shelf esteem
Thunderstorms and politicians are a lot alike: Both drift with the wind, both are full of hot air and both shy away from high pressure. And, fair or not, many people judge both by their faces.
While politicians grin for votes, though, storms glower over their constituents. Some even grow strange "shelf clouds" along their leading edges, like the one pictured here over Enschede, Netherlands. These cloudy countenances stretch out ahead of a storm, sometimes foreshadowing danger and sometimes just grandstanding.
To see more scowling storms, and to find out what causes them, check out the following photo gallery of nine frightening shelf clouds. (Text: Russell McLendon)
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Comments
For me its just a normal clouds, unlike the storm i was witness in PHILIPPINES and they call it ONDOY which killed many people and destroyed many properties in that country.
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Clever text, Russell. As for Chris's comment about the temperature of the air: it's all relative, isn't it? A T-storm is often born of a column of rising air that is warmer than the surounding air.
Good lord, MNN, every time I click a link to one of your articles from the CNN homepage, I find a glaring factual error that even someone with basic knowledge of the subject would catch. "Thunderstorms are full of hot air". Oh, really? They are? Are you sure they're not, I dunno, the exact opposite - full of COLD air?
Honestly, please fact-check your work. Your writers are apparently sacrificing facts in favor of snappy little puns, which, frankly, is unacceptable on a site that.... More
Hey, thanks for the comments. You're right, Bill, it is all relative.
Chris, the sentence you mention refers to the warm, moist air that fuels T-storms. You're correct that the air cools as it rises, but if we're being sticklers, no thunderstorm is completely "full" of just hot or cold air. For info about how thunderstorms form, you could check out this article: .... More
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