Crossword clues for cloudburst
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. A sudden heavy rainstorm.
WordNet
Wikipedia
A cloudburst is an extreme amount of precipitation, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, that normally lasts no longer than a few minutes but is capable of creating flood conditions. A cloudburst can suddenly dump large amounts of water e.g. 25 mm of precipitation corresponds to 25000 metric tons/km (1 inch corresponds to 72,300 short tons over one square mile). However, cloudbursts are infrequent as they occur only via orographic lift or occasionally when a warm air parcel mixes with cooler air, resulting in sudden condensation. At times, a large amount of runoff from higher elevations is mistakenly conflated with a cloudburst. The term "cloudburst" arose from the notion that clouds were akin to water-balloons and could burst, resulting in rapid precipitation; though this idea has since been disproven, the term remains in use .
Cloudburst is one of Eric Whitacre's most famous compositions. Whitacre wrote the piece in 1992 (age 22) for eight-part choir, with piano and percussion accompaniment. The text was adapted from Octavio Paz's poem El Cántaro Roto (The Broken Water-Jug).
The first section is a cappella, notable for its dissonant tone clusters. Whitacre notates long, sustained notes with text to be spoken at random by each individual singer. Following the opening section is a baritone solo, which is then followed by the development of a new a cappella theme. This section continues into a spoken, arrhythmic incantatory solo with background.
In the section titled "The Cloudburst", handbells (which are directed to be hidden from the audience) play a written two bars, and then play at random as the choir crescendos into an aleatoric section, which is signaled by a loud clap of "thunder". During this time, the choir begins claps, snaps, and thigh smacks in order to imitate the sound of rain. A thunder sheet, bass drum, handbells, suspended cymbal, wind chimes, and piano contribute to the effect of a thunderstorm. The storm gradually builds then fades, and the ending of the piece mirrors the beginning section, with the choir arpeggiating as the piano voices block chords.
"Cloudburst" was the title feature of an album by Stephen Layton's chamber choir Polyphony. The album included other works by Whitacre and was nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award in best Choral Performance.
A concert band version, commissioned for the Indiana All-State Band, was released by Whitacre in 2001.
A cloudburst is an extreme case of rainfall.
Cloudburst may also refer to:
- Cloudburst (1951 film), a 1951 film by Francis Seale
- Cloudburst (2011 film), a 2011 Canadian film
- Cloudburst, a company founded by NFL player Steve Wright that provides sideline misting systems
- Cloudburst (G.I. Joe), a fictional character in the G.I. Joe universe
- Cloudburst (Transformers), an Autobot Transformer
- Cloudburst (Whitacre), a musical composition by Eric Whitacre
- "Cloudburst", a B-side by Oasis from the CD single Live Forever
- Cloudburst, an album by Jon Hendricks
- Cloudburst, the final movement of Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite
- Cloudbursting, a phenomenon in cloud computing
Cloudburst is a fictional character from the Transformers series. He turns into a jet and has a shell that looked like an armored human. He shouldn't be confused with Phoenix, a Japanese Transformer who shares the same toy.
Cloudburst, in comics, may refer to:
- Cloudburst, a member of the DC Comics team the Extremists
- Cloudburst (Image Comics), an Image Comics graphic novel written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
- Cloudburst (G.I. Joe), a fictional character in the G.I. Joe universe who has appeared in the comic book adaptations
- Cloudburst (Transformers), an Autobot Transformer who has appeared in the comic book adaptations
Cloudburst is a 2011 Canadian-American adventure comedy-drama film by American-Canadian writer and director Thom Fitzgerald, starring Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, which premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia on September 16, 2011. The film is an adaptation of Fitzgerald's 2010 play of the same name. The film's cast also includes Kristin Booth, Ryan Doucette, John Dunsworth, and Jeremy Akerman.
Cloudburst is a 1951 British crime drama film, directed by Francis Searle, starring Robert Preston and featuring Elizabeth Sellars, Harold Lang, Colin Tapley and Sheila Burrell. The script is based on a play written by Leo Marks, a wartime cryptographer for the Special Operations Executive, and later the author of a memoir about his wartime work, Between Silk and Cyanide (1998). The film is about a World War II veteran, a former operative for the SOE, who seeks revenge on the driver and passenger of a hit-and-run automobile that struck and killed his wife.
Usage examples of "cloudburst".
She said she would, only wait a minute she wanted to get her purse, which she did, and they wandered around in the park until, thank you Lord, a roaring cloudburst forced them into a little shack and while the other pot-luckers were eating beans and franks and making forty-days-and-forty-nights jokes, Corde and Diane kissed, wet and hot, and she decided she was going to marry him.
Lone Morgan, riding early to the Sawtooth to see the foreman about getting a man for a few days to help replace a bridge carried fifty yards downstream by a local cloudburst, would not have changed places with a millionaire.
They wore neat, pseudomilitary uniforms consisting of navy-blue jumpsuits nipped in at ankle and wrist, white bandoliers and gloves, black ankle boots, and matching blue-and-white billed caps accented with gold cloudbursts.
But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.
Gorgidas said, but a grin stretched itself across his spare features as he watched the Khamorth lines dissolve under the froggy cloudburst like men of salt caught in the rain.
He waved his sword to the Arshaum, who were erupting in a cloudburst of cheers.
With a word, he could conjure up a cloudburst that would soak everything but him, a balmy tropical evening, a soft shower, brilliant sunrise or easygoing sunset, or a cloudless evening in which the stars put in their appearance with carefully preprogrammed deliberation.
Day after day this went on, to be followed by a cloudburst which filled every declivity with water.
It was coming down hard, a silver-white rushing wall, the typical spring cloudburst that seemed to beat the air right into the ground.
The cloudburst continued, the arteries of the land were 460 swelling, the water splashed down in the brooks.
He wondered what sort of being this was, capable of grasping a story from beginning to end simultaneously, able to examine a dozen or a hundred or a thousand separate incidents in the same cloudburst of imagery.
There was no way of knowing if the prowler in each case had been the one he had saved from the cloudburst or if the prowlers, as a whole, were respecting what a human had done for one of them.
Cloudbursts, severe wind storms and other disturbances of Nature are all adjuncts of the spirit of war and rapine.
It also began with loud smelly farts, with bad breaths, with ragged nerves, with epilepsy, with meningitis, with low wages, with back pay that was overdue, with worn-out shoes, with corns and bunions, with flat feet and broken arches, with pocket books missing and fountain pens lost or stolen, with telegrams floating in the sewer, with threats from the vice-president and advice from the managers, with wrangles and disputes, with cloudbursts and broken telegraph wires, with new methods of efficiency and old ones that had been discarded, with hope for better times and a prayer for the bonus which never came.
Only so had it been possible for the partners to do much work, interrupted as they often were by tropical cloudbursts, when for hours the whole plateau would become a lake.