What is this squid like cloud?

[Skip Talbot]

On June 4, Chad, Ben and I were out chasing near Kearney, NE when we saw some squid tentacles condensing horizontally off the front of a roll cloud. I was wondering if this feature had a name and what causes it:

Looking north:

Looking south:

 

[David Drummond]

Looks like some sort of inflow it's ingesting. That's interesting, never see one look like that. It does look like a squid!

 

[Shane Adams]

Like David, I've never seen anything quite like that. But yeah, it is very squid-like and unique. Nice catch.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I love how on almost every chase you seeing something totally unique or amazing.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

Skip,
That is strange you got a picture of this as I saw a similar one near Olpe, KS yesterday afternoon. This was also a first for me to see one that looked like that. The one I saw was not as dramatic as the one you got, but still interesting.

 

[Maggie Kahman]

That is a VERY beautiful roll cloud, Skip. Those squid thingys sure are strange; cant say iv ever seen anything like that.

 

[Chad Cowan]

That was definitely one of the coolest cloud features I've seen, and the thing that really surprised me about those 'tentacles' was that we looked away for about a minute and when we looked back they had all condensed into a huge continuation of the roll cloud like in the 3rd pic.

Photoshop is my friend:

 

[David Drummond]

Keep in mind as cool air pushes out, it's also scooping up air ahead of it, usually warm and moist air. It's more like a wedge than a wall, and that is where the shelf cloud formation comes in. Thus my thought of the tenticals being some sort of inflow at that level.