Snowstorms to Hurricanes: The Best Storm Photographs of 2011

2011 has been one stormy year! From coast to coast the United States has seen bizarre and extreme weather. From tornado outbreaks, to record snow, hurricanes, flooding and drought, it seems everything has happened this year. (read more about the national extreme weather of 2011 here: Top Ten weather Events of 2011 & here: Top Ten Weather Events of 2011: Tornadoes) Where I live in Southern Connecticut, we were not spared. In fact we have seen bizarre weather, in many cases extreme weather, spread out through the entire year. From record snowfall and snow cover in January, an ice storm in February, a Tropical storm in August, flooding rains in September and even a historic snowstorm in October! Many of these events have been 25, 50 and 100 year storms! Luckily I have been able to capture some of the crazy weather on film. Below are a number of storm related photographs I took this year. I have been able to document all the winter storms from the beginning of the year, as well as, more recently in October. I was very lucky to be able to get outside to take photographs of Tropical Storm Irene passing Southern Connecticut at high tide on August 28, 2011. I have also been lucky to catch some cool cloud formations following thunderstorms while also just capturing some calm weather photographs. All the photographs on this hub were taken with a Cannon DSLR camera.

The First photograph to the right, titled Beachfront Property, is from August when Tropical Storm Irene passed to the west of southern Connecticut. The coastal flooding and waves were huge for the normally placid Long Island Sound and as you can see in the photo, the waves crashed as high as the top of some houses. I love this photograph because of how i captured the waves splashing up mirroring the house, which is all boarded up. It was a wild day and I took copious amounts of photographs, all of which you can find on some of my other hubs! (check the links section at the bottom of the page for more Irene photos)

The above photography, Digging out the Mailbox, was taken the morning of January 27, 2011. In the early morning hours of that day parts of Southern Connecticut received 15-20 inches of snow in a matter of 4 hours or so! The snow rate was absolutely amazing, add in the fact that their was already close to two feet of snow on the ground and the resulting scene that you witnessed walking out the door was crazy! I like this photo because the mailbox is almost buried and this is before the snowplow came by! It gives you a good sense of how deep the snow is, a feeling of being buried in, which many were, especially with the front door to my house in the background.

The photograph above, The Backside of a Summer Thunderstorm, was taken in the heart of summer (early August) after a storm had moved through. The storms moved out before the sun set, so the backside of the storms were fully illuminated giving amazing sky shots like the one above.

The photograph above, Frozen World, was taken on February 3, 2011, a day after an ice storm. What was amazing about this storm was that all the ice stuck around for days. As you can see the next day was beautiful with bountiful sunshine! This abundant sunshine caused everything to shimmer, it was truly a winter wonderland!

Birds on the Beach, the photograph above was taken as the weather settled down in February, however the crazy winter weather of January was still around. This photo is actually of the beach, which looks more like an icy tundra! This didn't stop the birds from catching a few rays though, add in the setting sun behind me and you have beautiful sky meeting the icy cold blues of the beach!

Summer Morning at the Beach, photograph above, isn't a storm photo but I thought it was important to throw in one photo of nice weather! Just because with all the extreme weather it was nice to experience some good weather every once in a while. Also this proves that the whole year wasn't just bad weather! This photo is the only one not from Connecticut, this is a photo I took in Ocean City, Maryland in Late July 2011. A perfect beach morning with clear skies, calm water, and a clean beach. It's a great photo to look at in the heart of winter!

Back to more storm photos, here is a photograph Storm Surge Irene, which as the title suggest shows the storm surge from Tropical Storm Irene in Connecticut. This is just one photograph of many that I took of the storm surge.

The final photograph titled, Late September High Tide, is showing the choppy waters of Long Island Sound. The choppy waters and that day's flooding high tide resulted from the constant onshore wind that we occasionally get. This east wind tends to pile up the water into Long Island Sound. I was lucky to get a small wave crashing against this rock, which turns into an island at high tide.

In addition to the numerous photographs I took of the dangerous and extreme weather in 2011 I also did take a short video clip on one of my cameras. To the right is a short video, only about 25 seconds long that was taken along the shoreline in Milford, CT as Irene passed to the west of the location at High tide! It may not look impressive to other videos of storms hitting other beaches but Long Island Sound is protected from the giant waves of the Atlantic and usually has waves of a few inches if anything! In this video the waves are almost to the road, which is the high tide line. There is also supposed to be a 20 foot wide beach between the road and the water, yet there is none. In the video it may be annoying but you can hear the strong winds we were still experiencing at the time. Hope you enjoy!