Submit Your Unusual/Extreme Weather Pics

As our climate goes through changes I thought it important to build a photo archive of unusual and/or extreme weather events. If you have any photos of recent events that fit in this category please take the time to share them with the rest of the world. Basically here is an idea of what I am looking for...

1. Extreme or Unusual Weather Photos. Examples of extreme weather photos would be hurricane photos, tornados, blizzards, etc. Unusual photos would be the auroras, snow in Florida, summer frost, very early leaf changes, etc.

2. Pics should be recent though older photos are definately welcome.

3. Pictures MUST be your own. Do not submit the work of others.

4. Have fun documenting history.

What a cool idea!

Here is my contribution, but first, a little background as to why this constitutes unusual weather.

I live in a city called Brisbane, on the eastern seaboard of Australia. Brisbane has a very mild climate. Winters usually see temperatures of between 9 and 25 degrees C (50 and 80 F), while summers typically range from 20 to 40 degrees C (70 and 105 F). The idea that we would get anything like snow here is simply absurd. I am used to Brisbane's typical summer storms and grew up in the bush, where severe storms are extremely common in summer. But I have never seen anything like the storm we got hit with on May 19 this yar.

The storm started from the ugliest, greenest storm front I had ever seen. People were out on their balconies watching it come over. The temperature plummeted very rapidly and pelting rain started. About five minutes into the storm enormous, deafening sheets of hail began to literally bucket down. My friend and I couldn't hear each other speak due to the deafening noise. I took this picture, quite literally, less than 5 minutes after the hail began. I have increased the brightness so that you can see a little better, since there was no way I was going out into that, weatherproof camera or not.

As you can see, hail began to immediately pile up into drifts. In some suburbs, the hail was more than 3 and a half feet thick!!! Our local newspaper reported on this extremely unusual weather here. When the hail stopped, we ventured outside to have a look. There were kids sledding down their driveways, people building "hail-men" and a series of hail-ball fights. It was the most unusual and surreal thing I had ever seen. For our American cousins, you might want to consider that Brisbane has a climate similar to that of Miami.

I will not submit them here, as per Indy's guidelines, but the following links have some truly unbelievable photos of our warm, sunny, tropical city in the aftermath of an ice-storm:

Brisbane Hail Storm, May 2005
Ourbrisbane

Looking foward to other people's photos.

Edit to vote for Indy for this good idea.

You have voted Indy for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

[edit on 22/8/05 by Jeremiah25]

Obsolutely wonderful job and great post. This is EXACTLY the kind of material I was looking for. Couldn't have done it any better myself.

Nice picture. I don't think anyone would want to be caught in the open when those hail storms happened, I know I wouldn't want to be caught in one....and three and a half feet of hail?.....ouch...

Please keep sending any pictures of strange weather.

I do not have any pictures, the only strange thing that happened in the area I am at now was that a severe storm suddenly formed over Casper WY, about 4 weeks ago or so. (Can't remember the exact time at this moment.) The strange thing about this storm was that afterwards I spoke with some of my new co-workers who have lived their whole lives in this area ( over 45 years) and they told me that was the worse storm they had ever seen.

I was caught by the storm as i was living KFC in downtown Casper. (if you can call it downtown) All the radio stations went dead for a couple of minutes, a warning was issued and about 2-3 minutes later or so the storm started. I couldn't see anything beyong my windshield. I was driving 5 mh because i couldn't even see the street and whether or not I had changed lanes.

It is a shame I did not get any pictures. I bought my camera phone a week later, so if anything happens again i will take some pictures, alkthough right now I am close to Sidney, Montana. The weather here is great, it changes from cold to warm every other day or so, but I think that is normal for this area.

jeramiha25 how long have you been living in aus for? surly you know this is not unusual weather for this part of australia
every year i can remember there has been at least one hail storm somewhere along the east coast that has huge hail stones and it piles up and such. it aint nothing to special. also hail and snow are two compleatly different things, with most hail actally comming in summer, well from my experiance any way

jeramiha25 how long have you been living in aus for?

I have lived in Australia all my life and in Brisbane for almost 10 years. Yes, we have had hail storms before but, it the 10 years I have been in Brisbane, I have never seen a storm that left hail three feet deep like this one did. Of course storms such as this are bound to happen from time to time, but this is unusual because Brisbane simply does not experience hail storms of this magnitude. We get severe storms with hail, true, but not driving hail that covers the ground in a meter of ice. If you can think of another case where Brisbane has experienced this kind of storm, please let me know.

Storms, even severe storms, are not unusual for this part of Australia, but storms like the one on May 19 are. I also don't remember where in my post I said that the hail was snow - of course they are two different things. I even referred to hail-ball fights, rather than snow-ball fights.

Look, I'm a Brisbane resident and, as I said, I am used to severe storms. But this hail storm was unusual in its severity and in the amount of hail it deposited. In fact, Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson Bruce Gunn described the storm as "very unseasonal".

Perhaps storms such as this are not out of place in the southern, colder states, but it certainly was out of place in Brisbane, which is why I classed it as unusual weather. Everybody in Brisbane the next day was referring to the "freakish hail storm" and commenting on its severity. I have never seen its like in 10 years of storms in Brissie and many more in the bush. So, it's unusual.

i am almost 21 and have lived in brisbane all my life and i can back up what jeremiah25 has posted, i havent seen the likes of the hail we had that day before, sure weve had mini tornadoes, flash floods etc etc, but i cant remember hail that bad before the last storm

Originally posted by Jeremiah25

jeramiha25 how long have you been living in aus for?

I have lived in Australia all my life and in Brisbane for almost 10 years. Yes, we have had hail storms before but, it the 10 years I have been in Brisbane, I have never seen a storm that left hail three feet deep like this one did. Of course storms such as this are bound to happen from time to time, but this is unusual because Brisbane simply does not experience hail storms of this magnitude. We get severe storms with hail, true, but not driving hail that covers the ground in a meter of ice. If you can think of another case where Brisbane has experienced this kind of storm, please let me know.

Storms, even severe storms, are not unusual for this part of Australia, but storms like the one on May 19 are. I also don't remember where in my post I said that the hail was snow - of course they are two different things. I even referred to hail-ball fights, rather than snow-ball fights.

Look, I'm a Brisbane resident and, as I said, I am used to severe storms. But this hail storm was unusual in its severity and in the amount of hail it deposited. In fact, Bureau of Meteorology spokesperson Bruce Gunn described the storm as "very unseasonal".

Perhaps storms such as this are not out of place in the southern, colder states, but it certainly was out of place in Brisbane, which is why I classed it as unusual weather. Everybody in Brisbane the next day was referring to the "freakish hail storm" and commenting on its severity. I have never seen its like in 10 years of storms in Brissie and many more in the bush. So, it's unusual.

Great idea for a thread. Ive been taking photos of storms for quite some time, but we havnt had anything really spectacular this year yet. We get some crazy skies in Saskatchewan. Very open spaces here, makes for good photo opportunities of storm clouds.

So far my pictures a bit too bland for the thread though. Ill keep an eye out.

40mm (1.6") of water in 20 minutes. (for comparison they got half of that in athletics World Championships when they had to shut off electricity)
With couple showers in following hours and next day we got whole months rainfall in under 24 hours.

Considering rainfalls of this summer rice would have been more approriate grain if there would have been warm enough for it. May, June and this month have had ~2.5x rainfalls.

Where did this rainfall happen? That is the kind of rain I'd expect in a Florida thunderstorm. I see that kind of water sitting and I want to go running through it and splash around

Last winter 2004/05 Nevada.
I live in a rainshadow, which is a snowshadow in the winter!
Typically we get 12 inches or so, over the whole season.
Last season, my area recieved 6 feet to 9 feet. Overkill if you ask me.
This was followed by a temperature inversion, and 4 weeks of ice fog.
Pics of the fog will come, when I find them...

The rain image prompted me to post my own.

This was taken from inside my house, Aug. 24, 2005.




Further north of us they received 6 inches in a few hours.

Edit: News story to back up the claim

What was left of the flooding was going down the storm sewers in Hudson Bay. The Town was hammered with five to six inches of rain, Wednesday morning. Many streets, houses and yards were flooded, and the town's sewer system backed up.

Source

[edit on 27-8-2005 by Dulcimer]

Cat 1 Hurricane Katrina as it made its first landfall in South Florida




[edit on 8-27-2005 by worldwatcher]

Taken through ordinary window...

... after it received mix of supercooled water&sleet.

Originally posted by Indy
Where did this rainfall happen? That is the kind of rain I'd expect in a Florida thunderstorm. I see that kind of water sitting and I want to go running through it and splash around

Check my location.
Might have looked nice in weather radar map if FMI's and stormchasers "RaPu"-project (rae&puuska; rae=hail, puuska=gust) would have started earlier this year.
Actually that photo is after hardest rain... visiblity beyond that tree in center would been quite minimal. (~ 100 meters at worst... or "best").
And don't you have enough wet/slushy time here to take out extra enthusiasm for that?


And what is considered as extreme? Because I would have some really nice scenery photos considered completely normal in here but which would represent extreme weather for at least 95% of people.


PS. Because of not being taken by me I'm going to post two scanned photograps tomorrow in this thread as examples what hard shower causes.

Nice pic


[edit on 27-8-2005 by The Exiled One]