How to Use thunderhead in a Sentence

thunderhead

noun
  • A thunderhead was forming to the west.
  • Most of the books take place in the prolonged twilight of the 1930s, when war loomed like a distant thunderhead.
    Sam Sacks, WSJ, 21 Dec. 2018
  • Their thunderhead clouds can extend 40 miles from base to top, which is five times the height of Earth's thunderheads.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 11 May 2021
  • The impending doom of the 2021 CBA expiration will hang over the game like a thunderhead.
    Allie Morris, Dallas News, 14 June 2020
  • Lightning strikes, and the last rays of the day struggle to penetrate an ominous thunderhead.
    Anne Farrar, National Geographic, 18 June 2019
  • And so the dysfunctionality grinds on, even as the thunderheads roll in and the water levels rise.
    Michelle Cottle, The Atlantic, 5 Aug. 2017
  • Then, like a tulip unfurling in the morning, a thunderhead suddenly blossomed to the south.
    Noah Davis, The Christian Science Monitor, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Towering thunderheads may be commonplace closer to the equator this time of year, but just 300 miles from the North Pole?
    Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 14 Aug. 2019
  • Forest fires under black thunderheads that paid out no rain.
    Smith Henderson, Popular Mechanics, 20 Nov. 2017
  • Those thunderheads massing on the horizon let loose only a weak drizzle.
    Jennifer Senior, New York Times, 4 Jan. 2017
  • Off in the distance were puffy, juvenile thunderheads on the northeast horizon.
    Ernie Cowan Outdoors, sandiegouniontribune.com, 1 July 2017
  • Dr Price suspects that in his experiment the surface of the inner cylinder is taking on the role played in a thunderhead by water’s solid phase, ice.
    The Economist, 1 Aug. 2019
  • The thunderhead of smoke, a purple lesion on the orange twilight, is mysterious but not alarming.
    Dan Zak, Washington Post, 4 Nov. 2019
  • Like a thunderhead, the huge cloud spawned lightning strikes, worrying firefighters because of their potential to start new fires.
    BostonGlobe.com, 20 July 2021
  • Puffs of thunderhead smoke rising between tower blocks.
    Louise Doughty, New York Times, 20 Apr. 2018
  • Last Wednesday, though, conditions led to the creation of a larger, taller cloud called a pyrocumulonimbus, which is similar to a thunderhead.
    New York Times, 19 July 2021
  • Positively charged clouds rise, creating a tall cloud called a thunderhead.
    Rebecca Renner, National Geographic, 10 June 2020
  • The quintuple-feature starred a towering thunderhead, a menacing shelf cloud, a vibrant rainbow, a glorious sunset and concluded with a fireball that shot across the night sky.
    Jason Samenow, Washington Post, 29 July 2022
  • On ordinary days, a pleasant wisp of white or a menacing thunderhead serve a more pedestrian preoccupation, a pragmatic barometer for how to dress or where to go.
    Amy Ellis Nutt, Washington Post, 7 Oct. 2017
  • The thunderhead clouds were expected to give way by Sunday morning, but temperatures in the mountains were expected to hit 93 degrees on Sunday and Monday before dropping on Tuesday.
    Pauline Repard, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 July 2019
  • Away to the west thunderheads parted theatrically to reveal additional islands moored in distant anchorages of sun.
    Stanley Stewart, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 May 2020
  • In El Niño conditions, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean become unusually warm and tall thunderheads, known as cumulonimbus clouds, form over the water.
    Sindya N. Bhanoo, New York Times, 4 Jan. 2016
  • This phenomenon plays an important role in creating the earth’s (increasingly unstable) weather systems, which the show captured using time-lapses of thunderheads.
    The Editors, Outside Online, 1 Nov. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'thunderhead.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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