The Power Of Storms

Grassland birds of the Great Plains wade by the water's edge as a storm begins to take shape in the background.

A landspout tornado grinds across a farm field. Though they can cause damage, typically landspout tornadoes – or narrow, rope-like condensation funnels that form underneath a growing cumulus cloud – are weak in strength.

A lone lightning bolt strikes the ground beneath an isolated supercell thunderstorm at sunset. Supercell thunderstorms are one of two types of thunderstorms that produce tornadoes. They’re the most common and the most dangerous.

An angry sky screams with rage as a storm begins in the depth of the night. With about 1,000 tornadoes per year, the United States is a major hotspot for thunderstorms and resulting twisters.

Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Northern Texas, eastern Colorado and eastern South Dakota comprise “Tornado Alley,” home to some of the world’s most powerful and destructive storms.

Concurrent landspout tornadoes swirl side-by-side across cropland. Landspout tornadoes are a type of non-supercell thunderstorm that are typically weak and are less likely to cause damage.

Lightning flickers across the dismal, gray sky as rain clouds roll in. In order for thunderstorms to form, there needs to be warm moisture near the earth’s surface and cool, dry air above.

Scientists predict that climate change will intensify the severity of storms.

A heavy thunderstorm hits the Flint Hills in Strong City, Kansas. Kansas is one of several states that makes up the U.S.’s "Tornado Valley".

A faint trail of lighting cuts its way through evening clouds over a hilltop in Wyoming's Red Desert.

Streaks of lightning trace their way across the night sky.

A collection of lightning bolts flashes through a purple sky in the Sand Hills of Ogallala, Nebraska.

An F4 category tornado races toward a storm chaser’s van. The F (Fujita) scale was used to measure wind speeds based on damage left behind after a tornado. F4 tornadoes, capable of causing devastating damage, can have wind speeds from 207 mph to 260 mph.

A supercell thunderstorm takes over the landscape in South Dakota, producing cloud-to-ground bolts of lighting as it stretches across the twilight sky. Supercell thunderstorms are dangerous storms characterized by strong winds, hail and tornadoes.

Silent but steady, single bolt of lightning bursts through a golden sky.

Low-hanging rain clouds form a over a river in Western Australia.

A rare mother ship cloud formation moves across the Texas Panhandle.

Lightning juts out from a thick cloud as rain begins to fall in the background.

A couple of farmers pause from their work as they survey the looming threat from growing storm clouds in the Sand Hills of Ogallala, Nebraska, in 2003.