mushroom cloud

When John Folkes was 19 years old, he was on board a plane ordered to fly through four atomic bomb mushroom clouds.

Federal investigators later concluded that the open burn and the black mushroom cloud it produced were unnecessary, but it was too late.

And just as nuclear blasts produce a distinctive mushroom cloud, uncontrolled wildfires can be powerful enough to generate their own weather.

I crept to my one window and pulled aside the curtain, expecting to see a mushroom cloud rising over the Los Angeles basin.

Since Godzilla grew out of Japan’s atomic bombing trauma, his destruction of Tokyo’s Ginza district and assorted ships culminate in terrible — but gorgeous — mushroom clouds.