Beautiful aerial view of a thunderstorm complex

[Astral Blitzen 469]

 

The title of this thread says it all : D

At 1:40 in the middle right, there is a bulbous feature protruding upwards from the anvil cloud (the flat appearing cloud structure above the thunderstorm). This phenomena happens in very, very strong thunderstorms, with huge updraft speeds (the winds at the ground in this storm were measured to have gusts up to 90 mph!) and what happens is that the cloud penetrates through to the lower parts of the stratosphere.

 

Edited February 16, 2015 by Astral Blitzen