These were all taken on October 12th,  some of them downtown, the sunset ones from around my side of town.

The two sunset ones are probably the best, but I figured I would post them all for you guys to check out.

Enjoy!

This first one is just come high clouds in an interesting formation, but the real neat part is the two birds way up there.

This is a shot of Squaw Peak from downtown Phoenix.

Some cris-crossing high clouds

Sunset over South Mountain

I almost missed this one, but pulled over the car and grabbed the shot. Absolutely beautiful.

Here are some recent photos, all of which should also appear in my official gallery page: Mike’s Gallery. I’ve also joined JPG Magazine, so I have a profile page over there now too.

These first two are looking towards South Mountain at sunset.

This one is just a glance at some blowing clouds through Chandler.

The next few are sunrise photos over the San Tan mountains.

Took this one at noon as the sun was straight up behind some clouds. You can see the circle of the sun hiding behind them.

Epic in my world of course…because I know I can do better with some better tools, but for a little point-and-shoot camera, this is about as good as it gets.

I saw the skies starting to light up over Ocotillo and so I set up shop across Riggs. Of course, the lightning started to get close again, so I jumped in the car and had the tripod up against the inside of the car door and with the window rolled down, I grabbed the shot below.

There is a decent chance it might actually appear on Channel 12 news tonight at 4:30 pm. Also, if you want to help me out a bit, you can go vote it up over on Wunderground.com. I’m hoping it gets to an Approver’s Choice over there, but that’s a tough accomplishment.

Hope you enjoy the photo, I’ll be making a few Wallpapers of this and some others I took, which you can see below the lightning shot. It was also a stunning night with the sun setting and monsoons building, so I grabbed a few other shots.

These are the rest below…a nice sunset, and a few photos that I enhanced just a bit to bring out the colors and darkness.

Some crazy weather in the Plains States the last few days. Here are some weather shots, plus a special video from CNN from a stormchaser freaking out about this massive tornado AND another video from TornadoVideos.net, the site I frequent most these days.

This is a pretty bad tornado. As you see the building rip apart, it kind of looks like those scenes from Twister. For me personally, if I was next to a tornado that bad, I’d be driving in the OPPOSITE direction.

Listen for the guy telling us all the date, time and year of the video. I think at that point, he figured he was probably about to die *grin*

(thanks to Melanie for the link to this)

I think the above tornado may have been connected to this one below, but I’m not sure. It’s from Central Nebraska yesterday, same as the above. Anyways, it’s awesome and you can see the difference between stormchasers…the one above is freaking out, the ones below are yelling, but totally under control.

These two photos are from Rapid City, South Dakota. I’ve personally never seen a “supercell” (as they call it) like this…they are just so scary looking.

And holy crap, this next one…a “mesocyclone”, meaning it is a kind of rotating vortex within a storm system. Tornadoes form from these very often. Whatever it means, it’s downright creepy looking.

This next one isn’t so much a weather shot, but we needed a change of pace: a beautiful view from Vogel, Slovenia.

How about this one from Névache, France?

And dang, to close today’s post…how about this sunset from Burnsville, North Carolina? Serene…I could live there. (of course)

Enjoy.

Burnsville, NC

Fort Morgan, CO (wall cloud)

Not sure where this one came from…

Bangkok, Thailand

Deerfield Beach, Florida (over the Atlantic)

Stamford, TX…a wall cloud…you can see the dust on the ground indicating a tornado: