A terrifying storm cloud that looks like something out of a disaster movie has been caught on camera rolling across rural Uruguay. The video, filmed from a moving vehicle, shows a massive, dark, shelf-like cloud swallowing the sky above roads and open fields, with rain shafts hanging beneath it and a turbulent, churning structure along its leading edge. The footage is striking enough that it has spread quickly online, though the clip itself has not been independently verified. What is confirmed is that severe storms have been hitting the country this month, and the damage on the ground has been very real.

One of the worst nights came on October 7 and 8, when a violent storm hammered the northern department of Salto, where the weather station at the Nueva Hespérides airport recorded gusts of 125 km/h (78 mph), the strongest reading of the year there. The winds tore off roofs, toppled trees and power poles, shattered windows, and left roughly 5,000 customers in Salto without electricity, while more than 26,000 customers across the country lost power at the peak, according to the national utility UTE. Uruguay's weather service, Inumet, has issued warnings for heavy rain, hail, and lightning, mostly across the north. Forecasters say a strengthening El Niño pattern this year is adding to the atmospheric instability, raising the odds of more intense weather in the weeks ahead.