the.com/anvilcloud
the flat-topped warning that the sky is about to throw hands
means The flat, spreading top of a towering thunderstorm cloud, shaped like a blacksmith's anvil, that signals severe weather is brewing.
from A plain-spoken compound of "anvil" and "cloud." Meteorologists call this the incus (Latin for "anvil"), the flattened crown of a cumulonimbus storm cloud; the everyday English "anvilcloud" simply names the resemblance — the cloud's top spreads sideways into that classic anvil silhouette when rising air hits the stable layer of the upper atmosphere and can climb no higher. "Anvil" itself comes from Old English "anfilt," the smith's iron block, while "cloud" derives from Old English "clūd," originally meaning a mass of rock or a hill — a fitting cousin, since both senses describe something heaped and looming overhead.
- shape source
- flattens against the stratosphere like dough on a ceiling
- size
- can stretch over 100 miles wide
- updraft speed
- interior winds exceed 100 miles per hour
- pilot rule
- aviators detour miles around its menacing overhang
- name origin
- resembles a blacksmith's anvil, hence the threat