A cloudburst is an extreme amount of precipitation in a short period of time, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, which is capable of creating flood conditions. During a cloudburst, more than 20 millimeters of rain may fall in a few minutes, and the results can be disastrous. Cloudbursts are especially common in mountainous areas, and they cause sudden and destructive floods. The warm air currents of a thunderstorm tend to follow the upward slope of a mountain, and violent uprushes of air can prevent the condensing raindrops from falling to the ground, causing a large amount of water to accumulate at high levels. When the upward currents are weakened, the whole of this water falls at one time, resulting in a cloudburst.
Although the term "cloudburst" arose from the notion that clouds were akin to water balloons and could burst, resulting in rapid precipitation, this idea has since been disproven. However, the term remains in use. Cloudbursts are responsible for flash flood creation and can quickly dump large amounts of water.
Cloud bursting, on the other hand, is a configuration method that uses cloud computing resources whenever on-premises infrastructure reaches peak capacity. When organizations run out of computing resources in their internal data center, they burst the extra workload to external third-party cloud services. Cloud bursting is a convenient and cost-effective way to support workloads with varying demand patterns and seasonal spikes in demand.
