Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut for the European Space Agency, witnessed the northern lights from a vantage point that most of us never will.
A French astronaut for the European Space Agency, snapped this photo of the Aurora Borealis from the International Space Station on November 4, 2021. (Thomas Pesquet)
Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut for the European Space Agency, witnessed the northern lights from a vantage point that most of us never will – high above the Earth on the International Space Station. He snapped two amazing photos and shared them on his Flickr account.
"Nature decided to offer us a final bouquet for the start: the most intense aurora borealis of the whole mission," he said on Twitter. "We flew through it, our noses glued to the windows over North America and Canada. Amazing spikes, higher than our orbit, and we flew right above the center of the ring, with rapid waves and pulses all over."
It wasn't the first time Pesquet had captured the Northern Lights on the ISS -- in November 2017, he recorded a timelapse video showing what the aurora looks like from a distance.
The first record of the Northern Lights is thought to be a 30,000-year-old painting in a cave in France. Much more recently, the Vikings believed the aurora was light reflecting off the armor of supernatural maidens in the afterlife.
This is not the first time photos of the aurora have been featured in Weather Permitting. Scroll down to see amazing photos of the aurora doing an impression of a hurricane over Alaska.
A high school biology teacher captured a "horseshoe vortex cloud" on film in Livingston, Montana on Nov. 15, 2021. (Sarah Tabor)
High school Earth Science teacher Sarah Tabor saw a bizarre cloud formation on November 15, 2021, stopped to take pictures of it, and then queried the collective consciousness of Twitter to identify it. Meteorologists worldwide responded: She had captured a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a "horseshoe vortex cloud."
This oddity forms from a rising air current that takes on a twisting motion when encountering wind shear as it moves up in the atmosphere. With precise moisture and temperature conditions, a cloud can form around these otherwise-invisible vortexes. Because the conditions must be very precise for the cloud to form and survive in a turbulent atmosphere, it is often fleeting. The Cloud Appreciation Society only has 2 photos of horseshoe vortex clouds, out of more than 2,000 submitted to their website.
Lightning electrifies the Grand Canyon during a thunderstorm on Jul. 21, 2021 (NPS/M. Quinn)
A thunderstorm during sunset is something to behold. On July 21, 2021, Michael Quinn snapped a photo that was even more amazing: A thunderstorm with a sunset over the Grand Canyon National Park.
Much of Arizona, including the Grand Canyon, was under a severe to extreme drought this year, though an overactive monsoon season helped tame the dry conditions, bringing more rain -- and thunderstorms -- than typically occur during the summer.
The park is home to the immense Grand Canyon itself, over a mile deep and 18 miles wide at one point. The canyon doesn't appear to be getting any wider, the National Park Service says, but it is getting deeper as the Colorado River continues to carve into the ground.
The canyon creates its own weather, which can vary drastically. Temperatures have been recorded between 22 degrees below zero F and 120 degrees F over the years. Snowfall also varies from nil to extreme; the North Rim recorded 272.8 inches (almost 23 feet!) of snow in 1978, but the Phantom Ranch area averages less than an inch each season.
Giulio Montini's spectacular photo,'Morning Fog,' taken in Airuno, Italy took the top prize in the 2021 Weather Photographer of the Year competition.
The Royal Meteorological Society has announced the 2021 winners of its annual Weather Photographer of the Year competition in association with AccuWeather. Giulio Montini's spectacular photo “Morning Fog,” taken in Airuno, Italy, took the top prize. The photograph led a plethora of entries that celebrated the unquestionable awe and beauty of weather.
Giulio explained that the winning photo wasn’t easy to capture: "This photo can only be taken from one point. There is a small church on top of a hill in the town of Airuno. Under the mist passes the river Adda. In the autumn months, on some days, it is possible to see this show with the first lights of sunrise. After 20 minutes, everything is over. This award repays me for the cold hours endured, waiting for the perfect light for that photo.“
Airuno is a small town in northern Italy, nestled in the hills northeast of Milan on the edge of the Po Valley, an area once considered one of the foggiest places in the world. Fog has decreased significantly in Po Valley in the last 30 years, due to pollution reduction and increasing temperatures due to climate change.
Giulio snapped the winning picture on Oct. 30, 2016. The temperatures at the end of October in Airuno are similar to those of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with highs in the upper 60s Fahrenheit and low temperatures in the mid 50s.
Out of 8,900 photos taken by more than 3,300 photographers from 114 countries, "Morning Fog" was chosen as the overall winner by an esteemed international panel of judges. Yours truly was one of the judges for the 2021 contest and what struck me about this photo was that fog at sunrise can create surreal landscapes with unique colors that can only be captured from above. In this winning photo, we see the sun’s rays illustrating the cotton-candy nature of the fog – which made for quite the capture!
The Christ the Redeemer statue is seen during its restoration as work is underway ahead of its 90th anniversary, in Rio de Janeiro
Standing 124 feet high, atop a 2,300-foot-tall mountain, “Christ the Redeemer” took nine years to complete and was built to withstand 124-mph winds. On Oct. 12, 2021, the iconic statue turned 90 years old. The reinforced concrete statue has weathered many storms and all sorts of harsh weather and has suffered only minor damage. High winds and rain continue to erode the stone, and lightning strikes in 2008 and 2014 marred the cultural icon, despite lightning rods that are in place on the head and arms. If you look closely at this photo, you can see the cables that carry the lightning's charge, the rods on the top of the head and the intricate soapstone triangles that cover the rough concrete.
Major restoration on the statue was performed in 1990 and 2010 and then again in 2021, the 90th anniversary of the statue’s completion. Restoration involved cleaning and replacing the mortar and soapstone and filling in cracks. The statue, finished and unveiled in 1931, is the most recently-built structure awarded the "New Seven Wonders of the World" status.
Drone footage from Jared Hoopingarner on Oct. 3, 2021 shows Highway 221 near Grandfather Mountain, NC.
It was a cloudy afternoon on October 3, 2021 when Jared Hoopingarner launched his drone from U.S. Route 221 just below Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina. It wasn't until he reviewed the footage that he realized that the highway seemed to separate the fall color, with flaming orange and red autumn foliage on one side, and trees that were still predominantly green higher up in elevation.
Fall color, or more specifically, the trees that produce it, are often elevation-based. Satellite views of the area confirm the stark difference can also be perceived in early spring. According to a press release from the mountain, "Elevation also contributes to the diversity of plant species and range of [fall] color. Because Grandfather Mountain rises abruptly from the valley floor, different ecosystems exist at 16 different levels."
One of the highest mountains east of the Mississippi, standing at 5,946 feet, Grandfather Mountain is known for its harsh weather. Winds over 200 mph have been recorded there, but have not been verified as meteorological records due to the type and location of the instruments. As much as 10 feet of snow can fall on the mountain's peak during winter, and temperatures have plunged as low as -35 degrees F.
Some of the rock formations that grace the majestic mountain are estimated to date back to 1.2 billion years ago. It was named after the profile of one rock formation in particular, which locals said resembles an old man.
The Harvest Moon rises with Jupiter, over the Atlantic Ocean in Ocean City, New Jersey on Sept. 20, 2021. Far out at sea is post-tropical storm Odette. (AccuWeather/Andrew Tavani)
Each September, the "Harvest Moon" tantalizes sky gazers. This year, it rose less than 48 hours before the start of fall. Andrew Tavani, AccuWeather executive editor snapped this picture from the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. As the full moon brightened the blue sky and gray clouds to almost daylight conditions, sea oats in the moonlight looked like wheat ready to be harvested. If you look closely above and to the right of the moon, you'll also see the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter. Far out to sea at the time was post-tropical storm Odette, which had been stirring up rough surf all day along the Ocean City beaches.
The nickname for the September full moon dates back to the time before electricity when farmers harvested their annual crop and light from the moon helped them work well after sunset. The cooler conditions at night could also be a bit more comfortable than working in the heat of the day, especially during late-summer warm spells.
In addition to being called the Harvest Moon, September’s full moon is also known as the Corn Moon, the Autumn Moon, the Falling Leaves Moon and the Yellow Leaf Moon.
In this photo taken from a drone, Milwaukee is seen at sunset on Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Wednesday marks the official start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere. With the change in seasons comes a change in the amount of daylight left for people to enjoy this time of year. From the coasts of New England to the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, daylight is quickly dwindling with the sun setting as early as 6:40 in Portland, Maine, and 6:58 in Denver. Still, that hasn't prevented some photographers with The Associated Press from capturing several radiant sunsets throughout the final days of summer across the United States. From pink skies in Milwaukee to an orange haze over the smoky Rockies to a golden evening on the water in Maine, there was plenty of color in the late summer skies across the country
Summer of 2021 was notable in many regards, but perhaps nothing stood out more than the number of heat records that were set. A historic heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest in June, setting all-time highs in Portland, Oregon, Seattle and in Lytton, British Columbia. In fact, the 121 F degree reading in Lytton was the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada.
Death Valley California, on more than one occasion, came within striking distance of its own world record air temperature of 134 F from 1913. In mid-July, a temperature of 130 F was recorded there as a heat wave roasted the southwestern U.S. Across the globe, a dangerous heat wave baked the Mediterranean region of Europe in mid-August. On Aug. 11, a temperature of 119.8 F in Sicily, Italy, set a new all-time record in Europe -- pending verification by the World Meteorological Organization. In addition, no month on record was ever as hot as July 2021.
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