Bonnie's clouds pierced stratosphere.Thunderstorm thunderstorm, violent, local atmospheric disturbance accompanied by lightning, thunder, and heavy rain, often by strong gusts of wind, and sometimes by hail. clouds in hurricane Bonnie punched their way up to dizzying heights, according to images collected by a rain-sensing satellite. The radar on the craft, which was launched last fall, detected a narrow chimney of rain clouds reaching up to an altitude of 18 kilometers. Thunderstorm clouds in the Atlantic typically do not extend higher than 15 to 16 km, the top of the troposphere troposphere: see atmosphere. troposphere Lowest region of the atmosphere, bounded by the Earth below and the stratosphere above, with the upper boundary being about 6–8 mi (10–13 km) above the Earth's surface. , says Christian Kummerow of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center. GSFC employs approximately 10,000 civil servants and contractors, and is located approximately 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Md. Above the troposphere lies the stratosphere, where rain clouds cannot normally exist. The chimney clouds from Bonnie soared so quickly that they temporarily projected into the stratosphere, says Kummerow. Meteorologists Atmospheric scientists
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