Yahoo Finance These Weather Photos Of The Year Are Filled With Awe And Wonder
Weather is a majestic and awe-inspiring thing, and it’s never more perfectly captured than in the Weather Photographer of the Year awards.
Dramatic clouds, bright rainbows, shocking floods and magical mists made up the 2021 shortlisted entries. But none could beat Giulio Montini’s spectacular photo, ‘Morning Fog’, which has been crowned the overall winner by the panel of esteemed judges.
The image was taken on an opaque autumn day from a small church on a hilltop in the town of Airuno, Italy – and we’re sure you’ll agree, it’s pretty breathtaking.
The annual awards, hosted by the Royal Meteorological Society in association with AccuWeather, are designed to showcase the awe of the world’s weather, as well as the consequences of climate change.
This year, there were over 8,900 entries submitted to the competition taken by more than 3,300 photographers from 114 countries.
The Young Weather Photographer of the Year 2021 (for under 18s) was awarded to 17-year-old Phoenix Blue, from Kansas, with this photo of a ‘Kansas Storm’ in Goddard in the US. Phoenix took this photo on an iPhone of the “beautiful clouds coming in right before a storm.”
The shortlisted images were put to a public vote, with an overwhelming response of 12,392 votes cast for the 21 finalists representing 15 countries.
The winning image from the public vote was ‘Lightning from an Isolated Storm over Cannes Bay’, taken by Serge Zaka from France. This photo was also placed in third place by the judging panel.
New for this year, the sixth year of the competition, there was a mobile phone category, attracting a high standard of entries to rival the main competition.
The winner was Christopher de Castro Comeso from Abu Dhabi, UAE with ‘Foggy Morning’. He was on his way home after dropping his wife at work when he saw the fog forming. Immediately, he took out the only camera he had – his mobile phone – and captured this beautiful shot.
Congratulations to all the winners! For more weather wonder, check out the runner’s up, decided by the judging panel, below:
Sadly, the UK finalists were pipped to the post, but here are a few of the fantastic shots.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost UK and has been updated.
