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C'è una nuvola nera, il temporale sta per iniziare.

C'è una nuvola nera, il temporale sta per iniziare.
There is a black cloud, the thunderstorm is about to begin.
From Lesson 92:Imminent actions (stare per)·Italian

Questions & Answers about C'è una nuvola nera, il temporale sta per iniziare.

How exactly does sta per iniziare mean "is about to begin"?
The structure stare per followed by an infinitive verb (the dictionary form of a verb, like iniziare) is used to express that something is about to happen right now. Because il temporale (the thunderstorm) is an "it", we use the "he/she/it" form of stare, which is sta.
Why does il temporale end in -e instead of -o if it's a masculine word?
Not all masculine words end in -o in Italian! There is a large group of nouns that end in -e in the singular, and they can be either masculine or feminine. You just have to memorize their gender. Temporale happens to be masculine, which is why it uses the masculine word for "the" (il).
Why does the color come after the noun in nuvola nera?
In English we say "black cloud", but Italian places most descriptive adjectives—especially colors, physical descriptions, and nationalities—directly after the noun they describe. It also ends in -a (nera) to agree with the feminine singular noun nuvola.
Just a quick refresher: why is there an apostrophe in C'è?
C'è is the singular form of "there is". It is a contraction of ci (there) and è (is). Because è starts with a vowel, the i in ci is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe to make it flow better when speaking. We use the singular form here because there is only one cloud (una nuvola).

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