thunderhead

English

Thunderheads near Borneo

Etymology

thunder +‎ head

Noun

thunderhead (plural thunderheads)

1. The top portion of a cumulonimbus cloud, which tends to be flattened or fibery in appearance, and may be indicative of thunderstorm activity.
   • 1918, Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 19, p. 158,^[1]

     Half the sky was checkered with black thunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear:

   • 1947, Kenneth Roberts, Lydia Bailey, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 28,^[2]

     The wisps of smoke above Léogane became dark and thick, and flowered into a towering thunderhead—an ominous cloud that drifted slowly to the westward and was constantly replenished at its base by uprushes of blacker smoke.

   • 2000, Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, New York: Del Rey, Chapter 29, p. 349,^[3]

     The sky ahead was huge with storm: all the whiteness had gone from the thunderheads, and they rolled and swirled with sulphur yellow, sea green, smoke gray, oil black, a queasy churning miles high and as wide as the horizon.