The Winners of the 2022 Weather Photographer of the Year Competition

Oct 07, 2022

Matt Growcoot

A photo of monstrous waves battering a lighthouse has won the Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather Photographer of the Year Competition 2022.

Christopher Ison’s dramatic photo Storm Eunice taken in the U.K. last year was judged to be the top photo from 22 shortlisted images and Ison took home £500 ($560).

“When the storm was predicted, and it was carrying the first ever red warning for the south coast [of England], I knew I had to find a spot to record it – this was going to be big,” he says.

“I got there reasonably early to find many photographers already drenched in rain and seawater, standing very close to the harbor wall. I decided to head to high ground and slightly further away with my back to the weather. I was rewarded with a set of images I’m very proud of.”

The judges commented that they loved the power of nature in the photo, “reminding us how small and insignificant we are as it conveys the dramatic movement and force of sea together with the resistance offered by a man-made building.”

frozen — Second place. Frozen Niagra Falls | Zhenhuan Zhou

ghost cliff — Third place. Ghost Under a Cliff. A Brocken Spectre is a large shadow of an observer cast onto a cloud or mist. So, when a person stands on a hill partially covered in mist or cloud, their shadow can be projected down onto the mist or cloud if the sun is behind them. An optical illusion then makes the shadow appear gigantic and at a considerable distance away from them. The shadow can also fall onto water droplets of varying distances, which distorts the perception and can make the shadow appear to move as the clouds alter and shift. This combines to make the disorienting effect of a giant shadow moving in the distance | Emili Vilamala Benito

Second and third place also received cash prizes. The winner of the mobile phone category also received £500 ($560), with second place getting £250 ($280).

Mobile Phone Category Winner | Aung Chan Thar

Mobile Phone Category Runner Up | Vince Campbell

The Weather Photographer of the Year competition is held each year by the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) based in the U.K. and is in association with AccuWeather.

Mammatus Clouds — Winner of Young Weather Photographer of the Year. Mammatus clouds are some of the most unusual and distinctive and are usually associated with large cumulonimbus clouds. They appear as a series of bulges or pouches emerging from the base of the cloud and form in the most unstable cumulonimbus clouds due to turbulence within the cloud | Eris Pil

Runner up Young Weather Photographer of the Year. The Tyndall effect is when sunlight is scattered by small particles in the air, such as dust or smoke particles. Similar to Rayleigh scattering, it is the process that causes the sky to appear blue and the sky at sunset and sunrise to appear orange or red. Under the Tyndall effect (and Rayleigh scattering), the shorter wavelength blue light is scattered more than the longer wavelength red light, and as our eyes are more sensitive to blue light, we see the sky as blue | Shreya Nair

RMetS is a charity that serves as the “leading independent expert in weather and climate” while AccuWeather is a source of weather forecasts serving more than 1.5 billion people daily to help them plan their lives.

More can be found on the competition’s website.