- NASA (Click to Enlarge)
High above the African continent, tall, dense cumulonimbus clouds, meaning ‘column rain’ in Latin, are the result of atmospheric instability. The clouds can form alone, in clusters, or along a cold front in a squall line. The high energy of these storms is associated with heavy precipitation, lightning, high wind speeds and tornadoes.
Awe-inspiring photo.
There’s nothing to see here, it’s just a UFO. Move along please.
Fucking cool photo!
Gorgeous photo, but what’s your point? Cumulonimbus can be found everywhere in the world on any day, except maybe Antarctica. Or is this just a pleasant new blog series for the weather geeks among us?
This photo actually shows the initial stages in the generation of a Charles Mudede post.
We get them in Seattle sometimes too, you know.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/veo/1115914…
It looks organic, like a fungus. What a complex planet we live on.
Where did you get ‘column rain’? Cumulus is “pile” or “mass”, and nimbus is “cloud”.
@8: That’s quoted directly from the NASA site: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegall…
Thanks, Grant. NASA’s horribly wrong on this one, though. Anything meaning rain would come from “pluvia” or “imber”, with the first being more likely. I can see how they might mistakenly attribute “cumulo”(mass, pile), with “columna”(column), though.
That said, amazing photo. Thanks for letting a bored linguist use his degree.
@5: LOLOLOL!! Fnarf ftw!!
How about a direct link?
Oh well, here it is: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegall…