Fog pours over Mallorca cliffs and lightning cracks above Manhattan, featured in this weather photography competition.

Fog Pours Over Mallorca Cliffs as Triple Lightning Cracks Above Manhattan

2026-11-04

Fog pours over Mallorca’s cliffs like a waterfall, and a triple lightning strike cracks above Manhattan. Both scenes are among the 30 finalists in the Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather Photographer of the Year 2026, a weather photography competition.

The shortlist was drawn from more than 5,500 entries submitted from 13 countries. The images show wildfires, floods, retreating glaciers, and rime ice formations on a Slovakian mountain fence.

Clouds flow like a waterfall over steep coastal cliffs into the sea at sunset.

Now in its second decade, the weather photography competition attracted photographers from Patagonia to Northern Ireland. Professor Liz Bentley, Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society and one of the judges, says the entries show “just how powerful photography can be in connecting people with weather and our changing climate.”

The judges will choose the category winners. The Public Favourite, however, is decided by readers of the weather photography competition. To vote, open the shortlist gallery, click “view photo” on a favorite, and cast a vote. Voting closes at 11:59 p.m. GMT on November 5, 2026. Winners will be announced on November 17, 2026.

Judging the weather photography competition

Fog that flows like water

Francisco Bailon Rodriguez shot this scene at sunrise from the Albercutz Watchtower in Mallorca, Spain. He faces the Formentor Peninsula, where the first light hits fog that fills the valleys below. Rodriguez recalls several days of anticyclonic weather and humid nights before the shoot.

Long curved bridge crosses calm sea as golden light breaks through clouds at sunset. — Long, curved bridge extending across the sea during a golden sunset with light rays breaking through the clouds.

Those conditions produced the blanket of fog and low cloud. Under persistent high pressure, air sinks and warms. That warm layer can sit above cooler air near the surface, forming a temperature inversion that acts like a lid and suppresses vertical mixing. Overnight, the ground loses heat, and the air above it cools to its dew point. Water vapor condenses into droplets, and fog forms.

The terrain shaped the scene. A southwesterly wind pushed the low cloud against steep cliffs. The cooler, denser air could only drain downhill under gravity, so the fog spills over the ridges and appears to fall into the sea. Judge Angela Nicholson praised “a fabulous sense of flow” and the way the exposure freezes the movement of the clouds.

Sunlight through a broken sky

Weilu Chen captured the sunrise over the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge in the Pearl River Delta, China. The bridge runs 55 kilometers, and its suspended roadway leads the eye toward a sky broken by cloud. Rays of light fan out from the horizon. Judge Kevin Thomas called it a “wonderful lead” through the scene’s points of interest.

Lightning strikes above a dark lake and landscape beneath purple-hued storm clouds. — Lightning strikes above a dark landscape and a lake under dramatic, purple-hued storm clouds.

Crepuscular rays appear when clouds or other objects block part of the sun’s light. Sunlight passes through the gaps and becomes visible when particles such as dust hang in the air. The result is bright beams separated by darker bands of shadow.

The gold color comes from the sun’s low position. Near the horizon, sunlight crosses far more atmosphere than it does at midday. Air molecules scatter the shorter blue and violet wavelengths more strongly, so the warm reds and oranges reach the camera. Calm water along the estuary catches that glow and extends it across the frame.

If the glowing sunlight and layered sky here appeal to you, Petr Horálek’s eclipse and atmospheric sky photography over Kitt Peak shows similar light effects in a different setting.

Lightning that reveals a storm’s shape

Laura Hedien was storm chasing in the Nebraska Sandhills when a supercell formed and produced lightning after dark. She describes the night as one where “Mother Nature was kind enough to give us a supercell and lightning at night.”

Shelf cloud looms over dark ocean at sunset, with rain falling in golden distance. — A shelf cloud looms over a dark ocean at sunset, with golden light illuminating heavy rain falling in the distance.

A single strike bisects the storm cloud and reaches toward a lake below. The flash lights up the towering structure that would otherwise stay hidden in the dark. Judge Kevin Thomas said the picture is “beautifully lit by the flash, which picks out the detail of the cloud.”

The flash also exposes an arcus cloud along the storm’s front edge. These long, low clouds are linked to thunderstorms and take the form of shelf clouds or roll clouds. Here, a shelf cloud runs along the leading edge. Cool air sinks from the storm and spreads across the ground, pushing warm, moist air upward. That air cools and condenses into the cloud’s distinctive shape. Heavy rain and gusty winds usually follow behind the shelf, not the shelf itself.

A supercell at sunset over Port Macquarie

At sunset over Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, a towering supercell filled the sky. William Huxley Eades describes its “sculpted cloud structure stretching across the sky as the rain core glows in golden light.” Dark, layered cloud contrasts with the warm light of the setting sun.

Large tornado descends from dark stormy clouds over a dirt road in an open field. — A large tornado descending from dark, stormy clouds above a dirt road in an open field.

Eades tracked the storm as it moved toward Australia’s east coast. “This storm approached from the west, and as it drew nearer, we could see its radar signature grow into a huge system,” he says. He has chased storms for 12 years, and he calls this combination of structure, light, and color “something special indeed.”

A supercell is a thunderstorm with a persistent rotating updraft, a rising column of air that keeps the storm organized far longer than an ordinary storm. Supercells can bring intense rain, damaging winds, large hail, and sometimes tornadoes. Their organized airflow also builds the curved bands and layered cloud seen in this image.

The first tornado Eades saw

On 23 May 2025, a powerful supercell near Akron, Colorado, USA, produced three tornadoes. For Eades, the day brought the first tornado he had ever witnessed after years of near misses. “Watching it descend from the rotating supercell was one of the most exhilarating and profound moments of my life,” he recalls.

Lightning strikes One World Trade Center and skyline, with Statue of Liberty in foreground. — Lightning bolts striking One World Trade Center and surrounding buildings in the New York City skyline, with the Statue of Liberty in the foreground.

The tornado’s size is hard to grasp at first. The headlights of a nearby car show how large the swirling column is. The tornado was rated EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which ranks tornadoes by the damage they cause.

Tornadoes need several ingredients. Warm, moist air near the ground feeds rising air, while cooler, drier air aloft adds instability. Vertical wind shear, a change in wind speed or direction with height, must also be present. In a supercell, a persistent updraft can tilt horizontal rotation into a vertical column. When that column reaches the ground, it becomes a tornado. Not every rotating supercell produces one, and researchers are still studying the exact processes involved.

This storm was especially active and produced two other tornadoes. Reports from the day included hailstones more than 3 inches across, about the size of a baseball.

Three strikes over the New York skyline

Dan Martland photographed the scene from Bayonne, New Jersey, USA. Three lightning strikes lit the sky above the New York City skyline in a single frame.

A hiker stands on a mountain peak overlooking a fjord during golden sunset. — A hiker stands on a mountain peak overlooking a fjord during a golden sunset.

Martland tracked the cells on RadarScope and expected the storm to miss the city. “But this bolt came out of nowhere,” he says. His lightning trigger fired the camera, which was already framed toward the city.

August in New York brings hot, humid air, the fuel for strong thunderstorms. Warm air rises, cools, and condenses into towering cumulonimbus clouds. Updrafts carry water droplets high, while downdrafts drop hail and ice toward the surface. When the two collide, electrical charges separate. Once the difference grows large enough, the atmosphere discharges it as lightning.

Cloud-to-ground lightning forms in stages. A stepped leader, an invisible channel of negative charge, zigzags down from the cloud. Streamers of positive charge rise from the tallest objects below. When the two connect, a powerful current surges along the path at about 60,000 miles per second, producing the flash the camera records.

Midnight sun above Reine

Vit Javorik photographed the fjords of Reine in Norway’s Lofoten archipelago at midnight. Sunlight pours between jagged peaks and into the fjord basin, giving the scene a golden glow long after most of the world has gone dark.

Sunlight streams through clouds above mountain ridges partly hidden by thick fog. — Sunlight streams through clouds above mountain ridges partially obscured by a thick layer of fog.

The midnight sun occurs north of the Arctic Circle. During summer, the Earth’s tilt keeps the sun above the horizon for days, weeks, or months, depending on latitude. Instead of a cycle of sunrise, sunset, and night, the sun traces a low arc across the sky.

Javorik flew a drone for the shot. He climbed the Reinebringen twice in one day and waited until midnight for conditions he wanted. The result is a reminder that the most striking weather photography often depends on patience as much as on the sky.

Competitions like this one draw remarkable frames from across the world, and the 2026 Bird Photographer of the Year entries offer another large showcase of prize-chasing photography.

Supercell clouds with multiple lightning strikes over a straight road across flat dark landscape. — Supercell storm clouds with multiple lightning strikes over a straight road cutting through a flat, dark landscape.

Across the 30 finalists in this weather photography competition, the common thread is the same: weather that is dramatic to watch and hard to capture. Each frame records the physics behind the spectacle, from the inversion that traps fog to the charge separation that forks lightning. The public vote closes on November 5, 2026, and the judges’ winners follow on November 17.

Snow-capped mountain peak beneath a large layered lenticular cloud at dusk. — Snow-capped mountain peak beneath a large, layered lenticular cloud at dusk.

Golden pagoda rises above a dense forest and town partly hidden by morning mist. — Golden pagoda rising above a dense forest and town partially obscured by morning mist.

Rainbow arches over a lake and mountains beneath a cloudy sky. — Rainbow arching over a lake and mountains beneath a cloudy sky.

Dark, heavy storm clouds loom over a coastal city skyline and nearby islands. — Dark, heavy storm clouds over a coastal city skyline and surrounding islands.

Full-circle rainbow arches over rolling green mountain ridges under a cloudy sky. — A full-circle rainbow arches over rolling green mountain ridges under a cloudy sky.

Thick frost forms a V-shape on chain-link fence wires against a clear blue sky. — Thick frost in a V-shape coating the metal wires of a chain-link fence, set against a clear blue sky.

Electric blue and silver noctilucent clouds in wave patterns above a dark mountain silhouette. — Electric blue and silver noctilucent clouds in wave patterns glowing above a dark mountain silhouette at sunset.

Silhouetted people walk across the long U Bein Bridge over water at sunset. — Silhouetted people walking across the long U Bein Bridge over water at sunset.

Umbrella reflection appears in a puddle dotted with raindrops. — Reflection of an umbrella being held in a rain-dappled puddle.

Red ferry sails across calm water before a large mist-covered mountain. — Red ferry traveling on calm water before a large, mist-covered mountain.

Sunlight illuminates rolling misty hills dotted with sparse trees at sunrise. — Sunlight illuminates rolling, misty hills dotted with sparse trees at sunrise.

Rainbow arches over a cluster of offshore wind turbines standing in the water. — A rainbow arches over a cluster of offshore wind turbines in the water.

Hand holds a long tool in a field surrounded by thick smoke and flames. — A long tool held in a hand in a field surrounded by thick smoke and flames.

Large iceberg floats in calm water during a pastel sunset. — Large iceberg floating in calm water during a pastel sunset.

Small church on a reservoir shore, cracked dry mud in front, rocky cliffs beyond. — Small church on the shore of a reservoir, with cracked dry mud in the foreground, tall rocky cliffs in the distance, and a partly cloudy sky.

Aerial view of a C-shaped river island crowded with houses and trees, surrounded by water. — Aerial view of a C-shaped river island densely packed with houses and trees, surrounded by open water.

Circle Line ferry sails the East River beneath the Manhattan Bridge with Brooklyn Bridge behind. — Circle Line ferry sailing on the East River beneath the Manhattan Bridge, with the Brooklyn Bridge and the hazy New York City skyline in the background.

Large iceberg calves into water beside a rocky cliffside. — A large iceberg calving into the water beside a rocky cliffside.

Icebergs float in a glacier lake with snow-capped mountains in the background. — Icebergs floating in a glacier lake with snow-capped mountains in the background.

Large pine with exposed roots stands in scorched landscape after forest fire, mountains beyond. — Large pine tree with exposed roots standing in the center of a scorched landscape after a forest fire, with distant mountains under a cloudy sky.

Source: dpreview.com

Frequently asked questions

How can I vote for the Public Favourite in the weather photography competition?

To vote, open the shortlist gallery, click “view photo” on a favorite, and cast a vote. Voting closes at 11:59 p.m. GMT on November 5, 2026.

When will the Weather Photographer of the Year 2026 winners be announced?

Winners of the Weather Photographer of the Year 2026 competition will be announced on November 17, 2026. The judges will choose the category winners, while the Public Favourite is decided by readers.

How many entries did the Weather Photographer of the Year 2026 competition receive?

The competition received more than 5,500 entries from 13 countries. The shortlist of 30 finalists was drawn from these entries.

What causes the fog that looks like a waterfall over Mallorca’s cliffs?

Several days of anticyclonic weather and humid nights produced the fog and low cloud. Under persistent high pressure, a temperature inversion formed, and a southwesterly wind pushed the low cloud against steep cliffs, causing the fog to spill over the ridges.