Weird clouds, stormy skies and spectacular lightning – check out these incredible weather photos!

The skies have opened this September and so has the voting for the Weather Photographer of the Year competition.

Now in its tenth year, the competition is organised by the Royal Meteorological Society, a group in the UK that studies weather and climate.

The images capture different types of weather from all around the world, including colourful skies and frosty scenes, while others highlight serious weather events like floods, storms, and heatwaves.

Over 4,000 photos were entered this year and a team of expert judges looked at them all and picked their favourites, with the final photos ready for the public to view and vote on.

Professor Liz Bentley, Chief Exec of the Royal Meteorological Society, said the competition helps people "capture the weather and climate through their lens" and share "vital stories" with the world.

Voting is open until 16 October and the winner will be announced on 30 October 2025.

Have a look at some of the photos that have been shortlisted...

Full circle rainbow

At Lugu Lake in China, photographer and engineer Geshuang Chen used a drone to take a photo from 500 metres up in the sky.

Flying above the rain with the sun behind, something very rare was captured – a full-circle rainbow!

We often see rainbows as colourful arcs in the sky, but from high up, it's possible to see the whole circle.

Rainbows happen when sunlight shines through raindrops. The light bends, bounces inside the drop, and bends again as it comes out – splitting into all the colours of the rainbow.

Spectacular lightning

One stormy night in Barcelona, Spain, photographer Carlos Castillejo Balsera captured an incredible moment.

A bright bolt of lightning lit up the sky and struck near the Sagrada Familia, a famous and very tall cathedral that's still being built!

Even though lightning looks like one big flash, it's actually made of many parts. The main bolt is the strongest, while smaller branches of electricity stretch out, trying to reach the ground.

Have you ever seen clouds like these?

While driving near Vodňany in Czech Republic, photographer Lukáš Gallo spotted some strange clouds forming in the sky - a rare set of wave-shaped clouds called Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds.

He quickly pulled over and took a photo from a nearby field. These special clouds form when strong winds blow in different directions high up in the sky.

Stormy skies

Photographer HeWei captured a dramatic photo of a huge storm cloud, called a supercell, hanging over Shanghai in China.

In this moment, the storm was so big and powerful, it made the city look tiny.

Supercell storms are the strongest kind of thunderstorm. They have spinning clouds that rise high into the sky and can bring strong winds, large hail, and sometimes even tornadoes.

Photographer Dominika Koszowska took this winter photo in Łapszanka, Poland.

She saw a lonely tree covered in hoarfrost - tiny ice crystals that sparkle in the light.

Hoarfrost forms when water in the air touches something that's very cold, like a tree on a freezing morning. It covers everything in a delicate layer of white, like nature's glitter.

Beneath Iceland's iconic Kirkjufell mountain, this picture by photographer Yevhen Samuchenko layers land, water, ice and sky in a single shot.

On the left, Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall surges through snow and rock; above the mountain top, Kirkjufell is framed by clouds. While the aurora borealis is also captured shimmering with blues and greens.

Auroras form when charged particles from the Sun collide with atoms high in Earth's atmosphere, producing glowing light displays that are most vivid near the north and south poles.

Which one is your favourite? Let us know in the comments...