Thunderhead

When the vast Central plains of the United States darken with thunderhead clouds, and rain and hailstones begin to pelt the ground, everyone and everything takes cover, except the pilots of the armor-plated T-28 Storm Penetrator airplane.

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

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.

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.