Earth Day photo selections; severe weather outbreak for TX/OK

Today is Earth Day, a day to celebrate the beauty of the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere of the planet that sustains us. As is my tradition on Earth Day, I'll present my five favorite wunderphotos uploaded to our web site over the past year. I want to thank everyone who has participated in making this the best weather photo gallery on the Internet--your photos are truly an inspiration! If you take a great image, I encourage you to upload your photo at higher resolution, so it can be considered for our new Worldview Gallery, updated weekly with the top wunderphotos of the week.

Of special note today is a photo posted by wunderground user Trigirl, who has posted some fantastic wunderphotos over the years. Her wunderphoto of eight young Mennonite women standing in the fog and light rain of the Smoky Mountains was posted on June 9 of last year. She entered the photo in the Smithsonian Magazine's photo contest in the Americana category, and won first prize out of 60,000 entries. Congratulations, Debra!


Figure 1. Eight young Mennonite women stand in the fog and light rain of the Smoky Mountains, on the scenic overlook wall.

Severe weather today for Texas and Oklahoma
The Storm Prediction Center has outlined a "Slight Risk" region of concern for severe weather over Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado today. Tomorrow, the action moves eastwards into the Mississippi Valley, and we could get one of the larger severe weather events of this quiet severe weather season. Our severe weather expert Dr. Rob Carver will blog on the action, if it cranks up.

Jeff Masters