Flashes of brilliance: 26 truly dramatic weather photos

Stunning scenes of weather from around the world are competing to win an esteemed prize from The Royal Meteorological Society

'Dam Wet', Andrew McCaren: 'Whilst trying to visualise the heavy rainfall of March 2019 Wet Sleddale came to mind, I have driven past Wet Sleddale dam many times and seen it dry even after prolonged rainfall, but thought I would take a chance. After a 4:30am start and a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my home in Leeds to Cumbria, [England,] I made it to the location and remember shouting 'yes yes yes' as I saw the water pouring down the spillway.'

'The Red Terror', Tori Jane Ostberg: 'An incredible EF2 tornado tears through a rural Colorado field after destroying a home. This tornado marked my very first day of my very first great plains storm chase adventure, and it was only a sign of the incredible things to come.'

'Trees & Fog', Preston Stoll: 'On the morning after a bitterly cold night in December, I left Steamboat Springs [Colorado, USA] in search of frost and any winter weather I could find. I wandered the roads and forests near the edge of the morning snow showers to find where interesting transitions in weather might be seen. This was the last photo of many taken that morning and my favourite by far. The fog bank behind the frosted trees isolates the small grove and creates a wonderfully minimalistic scene.'

'Before a Storm', Mikhail Shcheglov: 'The weather in Iceland is changing dramatically – all-time strong winds draw fantastic images in the sky, which follow each other rapidly. Sometimes they are vivid, picturesque and rich in contrast, sometimes – deep and dramatic. You need to stand by holding your camera ready to shoot the outstanding moment of nature transformation. This photo captures the surroundings of Dyrholaey Cape. Taken in the evening, a moment prior to a strong thunderstorm with hail.'

'El Chalten,' Francisco Javier Negroni Rodriguez: 'An hour before taking this photograph I was walking along the trails that surround the beautiful rock formation known as El Chalten in Argentina, the day was very cloudy... the climate in Patagonia is somewhat unpredictable, it changes every moment and the wind is so strong that it quickly moves the clouds. Only at times could the figure of the massif be distinguished. My hope was getting to a place from where I could wait very patiently for the weather to help me and give me a window of good weather at sunset to be able to take some photos, but nature surprised me... It was incredible! Only for a moment the clouds allowed me to see El Chalten and to my surprise there was a spectacular and brilliant lenticular cloud with a beautiful and perfect figure that I had never seen. It was a unique and unrepeatable gift that sometimes reminds me of how lucky I am to be a photographer and to be able to visit different places to show the world these natural and climatic beauties.'

'Monster', Maja Kraljik: 'This monster shelf cloud was perhaps the most beautiful structure and size over my area. I was waiting for two hours for the cloud to arrive and then it made a real mess.'

'Small Tornado', Hadi Dehghanpour: 'Every year, the Iranian people hold a glorious ritual to mourn during Muharram. This photo was taken before the start of the mourning ceremony in the historic city of Noshabad, Isfahan. A small tornado came towards the ceremony site and tore down the tents and benches.'

'A Thirsty Earth', Abdul Momin (photo taken in Chittagong, Bangladesh): 'In winter the water level drops and cultivable lands get dry causing serious drought. In some areas farmers can't even use water pumps to irrigate their lands. During the drought season people usually take fields as shortcuts to go from one village to another. I have tried to capture the scene in photos using my drone.'

"Final Stand', Tina Wright: 'This was one of the top two largest haboobs (dust storms) ever recorded in the state of Arizona. At the point of this photo it was fully mature, towering over a mile high with winds in excess of 80 miles per hour. The sun was setting, giving the dust wall its deep pink hue. It was a truly incredible sight to see!'

'Frosty Bison', Laura Hedien: 'We were touring the west side of [Yellowstone National] Park. It was a very cold sunrise, the coldest of the week so far. It was near zero degrees Fahrenheit. We came around the corner in our snow coach and saw this magnificent bison just sauntering down the road as if they owned the Park and they do! Keeping the required distance we hopped out, grabbed some photos, and quickly got back in the vehicle and watched as she/he walked about five feet right past us. It was as if we were not even there. It certainly added to the ghost-like event.'

'Sa Foradada Storm', Marc Marco Ripoll: 'I tried many times to catch a good lightning strike behind this rock called Sa Foradada, [Spain,] but every time I tried, the conditions were not so good. I didn't have the moon in the sky to illuminate the scene, or the lightning was too far away. This night I knew that a big storm was approaching Mallorca and all the conditions were perfect. I don't remember if the moon was full, but I remember that it was very big. This was perfect, because the moon was going to illuminate all the land and the sea and give more colour to the scene. I chose my composition, and I shot many pictures until the storm fell on me. This is one of the pictures I took that night in Sa Foradada. To see the storm and the lightning that night was something amazing.'

'Dream', Madison: 'On clear and calm nights, often during winter, radiation fog can form. Overnight, the air near the ground is cooled by the land surface losing heat through radiation. If the air is cooled sufficiently (to the dew point temperature), condensation occurs and fog forms. The cool, dense air will always sink to the lowest point it can, which is why it is common to see fog in river valleys and other low-lying areas. In this image, the fog and early morning mist have been illuminated by crepuscular rays. These are beams of sunlight, which usually radiate through gaps in the clouds. The sunlight is scattered by small water droplets, dust or other dry particles, resulting in the crepuscular rays we see. Here, the trees stand in for clouds and the fog acts as the reflecting medium.'

'Under the Rainbow', Joan Randles: 'I have been capturing the semi-feral ponies of the Gower, Swansea, [Wales,] for nearly a year, spending many hours observing them and the changes to their environment. Part of following their day to day lives means photographing them in all kinds of weather conditions. On this day I remember seeing the rainbow forming after a hailstorm. Knowing that there wouldn’t be too many opportunities such as this, I swiftly left my car as the hail passed and ran down the common as I wasn't sure how long the rainbow would be full for. Furthermore, due to the rapidly changing weather, including natural lighting conditions and that I was capturing a semi-feral animal, I was having to make a decision about the composition of the image with no more than minutes to spare.'

'Baikal Treasure', Alexey Trofimov: 'I took this photo during an expedition on the ice of Lake Baikal [Russia]. On the first day we arrived at Cape Kotelnikovsky, where I was attracted by ice hummocks and a snow cover. It was noon, not really my photo time. But the light that the sun gave, refracting in blocks of ice, caught my attention and made me take this picture.'

'Brooklyn Bridge in a Blizzard', Rudolf Sulgan: 'I made this image in 2018, during a strong blizzard as El Nino’s periodic warming of water often disrupts normal weather patterns. My main concern and inspiration is that my images hopefully do a small part in combating climate change.'

'Lavaredo's Gloria', Alex Wides: 'In this 360-degree panorama the moon illuminates the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Three Peaks of Lavaredo, Italy), as well as the fog and cloud that surrounds the cross on top of Mount Paterno. A magnified shadow of the photographer and the cross is also cast onto the fog below, an optical phenomenon called a Brocken Spectre. These occur when the sun or moon is low in the sky and the observer is looking down into fog or cloud from an elevated position. The sun or moon projects a shadow on the antisolar or antilunar point and this is often surrounded by delicately coloured rings, called a glory, caused by the backscattering of light by small droplets.'

'Tea Hills', Vu Trung Huan: 'Lost in the fairy scene. Long Coc tea hill, [Vietnam] has mysterious and strange features when the sun is not yet up. Hidden in the morning mist, the green colour of tea leaves still stands out. Early in the morning, holding a cup of tea, taking a breath of fresh air, watching the gentle green stretches of green tea hills. It is true that nothing is equal! For those who love nature, like to watch the sunrise, when standing on the top of the hill, you will the most clearly feel the transition between night and day. A large green land suddenly caught in sight. When the sun is up, everything is tinged with sunlight, on the tea buds there is still glittering morning dew, a pure beauty that makes you just want to embrace everything.'

'Ridgeline Optics', Richard Fox: 'After a foggy and snowy climb up onto Meall Nan Tarmachan (Hill of the Ptarmigans) (1043 m), [Scotland,] and along the Tarmachan Ridge, I was greeted, as I ate my lunch on Meall Garbh, to a break in the weather. The sun broke through and behind me a full fog bow, Brocken Spectre and glory. At one point there were multiple glories too.'

'Halo', Mikhail Kapychka: 'Lunar halo over the night forest lake, Mogilev, Belarus. I suddenly saw an unusual lunar halo in the night sky and hurried into the forest to take a picture of it. It was an amazing sight when in the night sky, the halo was like the eye of God. I've never seen this form of halo before. It was freezing weather and I couldn't stay in the forest for a long time, but I really wanted to take a picture of this image.'

'Mammatus Outbreak', Boris Jordan: 'This was by far the most spectacular mammatus display I've ever seen in my entire life. After a line of thunderstorms passed by and the sun disappeared behind the horizon, low-hanging mammatus clouds began to shine red and blue. At this moment I was just speechless, as the sky really looked like not from this planet. And as a nice bonus, distant lightning made the composition perfect. Mammatus mostly appear in association with strong thunderstorms, if the sinking air, which contains high amount of liquid water or ice, is cooler than the surrounding air.'

'Pinnacles of Light', Richard Fox: 'My wife and I visited the Isle of Harris and Lewis, [Scotland] on holiday for a week. One evening, after a day out on Lewis, we stopped off at the Mangersta sea stacks. It was pretty windy on the cliff tops, making long exposures quite challenging. All of a sudden a few rain showers passed over as the late evening light broke though, providing an amazing set of rainbows.'

'Predawn Thunderstorm over El Paso, Texas', Grace Bailey: 'Very early on the morning of November 6, I woke up and felt an urge to check my radar app on my phone.  I discovered a discrete thunderstorm cell was moving north from Mexico towards the US border near downtown El Paso. I hurriedly gathered my camera gear and drove to an overlook that gave me a perfect vista of the storm and of the downtown El Paso skyline. It's always been a "dream shot" of mine to capture lightning over this desert city landscape. Thankfully the storm held together as it made its trek north across the border between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. My dream shot came true as I captured this and several bolts before leaving shortly after this image was taken due to the lightning getting too close for comfort!'

'Steel Star', Yuriy Stolypin: 'For a very long time I have been hatching the idea of this photo. I wanted to take a photo of the tallest skyscraper in Europe, shrouded in morning fog. But for this shot I had to wait a long time for all the weather conditions to coincide. I regularly monitored the weather and looked into the city cameras to make sure that all shooting conditions were favourable for the intended shot, since I live very far from the shooting location. When everything coincided, early in the morning I called a taxi, arrived at the skyscraper, raised the drone as high as possible and took this picture.'

'Just Walking in the Rain', Adrian Campfield: 'My wife and I were standing on the platform waiting for the train at Waterloo Station in London, England. We had been walking around London for the day taking photos and were on the way home. Without any warning the heavens opened and the storm broke thunder and lightning everywhere. We both ran for cover under the platform shelter as did all the other waiting passengers. I saw this lone woman walking towards me with the umbrella up and I had enough time to get the camera ready. I zoomed in a little, set the speed at 1000/iso to freeze the falling raindrops and this was the result.'

'Cell with Rainbow', Sime Baresic: 'That afternoon I was asleep and suddenly woke up from my sleep and looked at my watch and I saw it was time to see off the sunset! When I was already halfway to the destination where I intended to photograph the sunset, I saw that something was safely being prepared and hurried to another destination! When I arrived I felt like a little kid, happy and fulfilled! An indescribable feeling to stand and watch and follow what nature means.'

'Winter sunset', Ivica Brlic: 'The weather conditions of that day were changeable: it was sunny, cloudy, windy, stormy … The photo shows a part of these weather conditions.'

From theatrical storms to icy scenes and ethereal lighting, the 26 images shortlisted by the Royal Meteorological Society for the 2020 Weather Photographer of the Year prize show the world at its most atmospheric.

The shots are taken across the globe, including Scottish Isles, Patagonia, Vietnam and Belarus, and they show fog, rain, snow, hurricanes and resplendent sunshine to name just a few of the changeable conditions on display.

The 26 images have been shared by the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS), in association with AccuWeather, and will now go to a public vote to decide the winner of the Weather Photographer of the Year 2020.

Click through the gallery above to see the shortlisted images, and read about them in the photographers' own words. 

Directly or indirectly, many of the images pass comment on climate change.

"Global warming is the primary cause of the current sea level rise. As a result, hundreds of millions of people living in coastal areas will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding," said Rudolf Sulgan of his image, Brooklyn Bridge in a Blizzard.

"Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. To combat this change in global temperature rise, we can reduce emissions and ensure communities have the resources they need to withstand the effects of climate change.

"Today’s choices will determine how high sea levels rise, how fast it occurs, and how much time we have to protect our communities. I made this image in 2018, during a strong blizzard as El Nino’s periodic warming of water often disrupts normal weather patterns.

My main concern and inspiration is that my images hopefully do a small part in combating climate change."

The public vote is open until midnight (BST), Friday, September 25, for more information or to vote, visit photocrowd.com/wpotyvote

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