Pensacola, Florida, Wins for 2014's Most Frightening Cloud

There are clouds, and then there are clouds: dark, billowing behemoths loaded with so much doom they make you want to crawl back into a diaper.

Thursday afternoon a cloud of the latter variety blew into Pensacola, Florida, and Debbie Williams at WKRG-TV was good enough to snag a photo so the Internet can be as aghast as these people on the beach. (Why aren't they running?) Here it is, in all its horizon-eating monstrosity:

Impressive looking shelf cloud moving into Pensacola FL earlier this afternoon. Via Debbie Williams, WKRG TV. pic.twitter.com/SOELCayzW9

— NWS Mobile (@NWSMobile) July 10, 2014

The National Weather Service also identified it as a shelf cloud, which are low, wedge-shaped gusters often attached to the bases of towering thunderstorms. And indeed, storms were in the forecast for yesterday... and today, and tomorrow, into infinity:

I can think of few clouds that carry this dominating bearing: last July's exploding mushroom over Denver must be one, and another would be 2011's "tsunami in the sky" that appeared in Nebraska after toppling through a space-time hole from the terrifying lightning blizzards of Jupiter. But for this year, the monster over Pensacola is so far in the lead for anxiety fuel. Here are a couple more shots of it:

Shelf cloud approaching Pensacola Beach (pic from @abner_berrios) @spann @NWSMobile pic.twitter.com/3kKFl3M79x

— Brantly Keiek (@BrantlyKeiek) July 10, 2014