Gape at Some of America's Best Weather Photography

Massive thunderstorm or sucking nuclear vortex to the Zorb universe? That’s a question you might ask marveling at the above shot from Prescott, Arizona,* which this week won an award in NOAA’s ”Weather in Focus” photo contest.

The agency and its judges—including the National Weather Service’s Douglas Hilderbrand, the National Press Club’s Darlene Shields, and the Washington Post’s Jason Samenow—reviewed more than 2,000 submissions to pick out these examples of the nation’s raging, majestic, often sublime meteorology. (Find a partial sampling below.) The winning photos, most taken since the beginning of 2014, will go on exhibit in July at NOAA’s campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.