The Big Picture blog on Boston.com is one of my favorites to follow and they have an awesome post today with all kinds of photos from the eclipse. Check them out by clicking here!

In the photo is a cameraman from the Discovery channel, Reed and their new Dominator (or SRV). The fact that this tornado is incredibly awesome, plus Reed got cut on his face from the driver’s side window blowing in…just gets me pumped for the upcoming season!

I did stop after about a mile to take the first two pictures below. Looking back towards the sunrise in the eastern sky, you can see the storms moving in and the rain falling.

The third picture is from my 19th floor office building downtown again looking east.

This is a fantastic one just shot by Chris Voyles on Saturday, July 18th down in Maricopa, Arizona:

We pulled in over half an inch of rain at my house and recorded a wind gust of 42.2mph.

Once the rain died down, I headed south and pulled over. I was a serious storm chaser at this point…had my latop on the passenger seat connected to the internet with my Blackberry watching the radar. My big fear was being struck by lightning so I was trying to find an open area.

As I was deciding what to do, a Maricopa County DPS office pulled up behind me, flashed me with that spotlight and asked for my license.

When he found out what I was doing out there, he laughed and told me he was confident I was about to get some good shots. Thanks man!

He was right.

The first four shots in the gallery below were taken south of Hunt Highway looking northeast towards a very active cell.

But the final ones were taken on Riggs between Cooper/Gilbert Roads looking northwest. In those shots you can see a plume of smoke in the foreground from a lumber yard fire at Arizona/Chandler Heights.

With my home being in the southeastern area of Phoenix, I wanted to start a photo series based on pictures taken from around our beautiful state. There are a ton of great Arizona photographers out there and they need some highlighting.

So without further babbling from me, here are a select group of shots from the last month or so taken in the AZ.

Taken by Jerry on July 17th down in Tucson around the Kitt Peak area:

Another shot by Jerry on the 16th:

Yet another stunner from Jerry taken on July 13th:

A final Jerry shot, taken on July 8th in Red Rock:

July 10th from Wilcox, taken by cyril8:

July 3rd in Coolidge, AZ:

July 11th in Williams:

(source: Wunderground)

Although at my house we recorded just around a 25mph wind gust, I’m sure it was much higher out where there aren’t houses and trees to slow down the wind speed.

The dust wasn’t followed up by any precipitation at all, so it hovered over town most of the night, even as late as 1am when I was driving home.

Here are some pictures I took down on Hunt Highway and then a sunset shot in Ahwatukee. Also a bonus picture from my buddy Tyler who had a nice view of the storm advancing on Maricopa.

This one below was taken with the good ol’ Blackberry.

And this is the picture from Tyler down in Maricopa.

The only downside about this little pullout in the desert south of my house…is the bugs. They just kind of land on you while you’re standing their watching a storm. Yuck.

Anyways, this storm had some great lightning strikes. These are probably my best photos thus far and I’m really happy with them. Hoping next year to have a camera with a bit of a time-lapse on it, but I’m impressed at what this little point and shoot can do.

As always, the outflow boundary from the storms in Payson seemed to “jump” Phoenix and build up back in the deserts. Weird stuff.

Anyways, after it passed us, I drove south past Hunt Highway and snapped these lightning shots. Nothing major, but it’s all I can do with a pocket camera!

These were taken looking southeast-ish towards Maricopa and Casa Grande.

I thought I’d pass on the image so you could get a look at what a tornado signature looks like on a radar image.

I’m no weather expert so I can’t explain all of it. But the the main part of the storm is the big red area. Most of these supercells move west to east and thus the right side of the image is the direction the storm is moving. So the red, yellow and great spreading out to the right is the leading edge of the storm.

The “hook” you see on the left side of the image, right where the little circles and arrows are, is where you’d find a tornado.

Basically this area is where the “updraft” of moist air is being sucked into the stormcell and then it condenses to water and rain falls in the front area of the storm.

This suction can sometimes start rotating, which is when you see wall clouds lower near a potential tornadic storm. If the rotation and suction is strong enough, a tornado can form.

In this image below, the little opposite arrows indicate winds moving in different directions, meaning definite rotation.

One interesting aspect of this radar is the light green area in the bottom left corner. I believe this is the “inflow” moisture. If you ever watch tornado shows, sometimes you’ll see a stream of clouds that looks like a long tail coming from a tornado wall cloud.

The inflow is actually air also being pulled into the cloud as it rotates and it turns into clouds itself as it condenses quickly as it rises.

So if you imagine the little area with the tiny triangles is rotating counter-clockwise, you can then imagine the inflow being sucked into the cell in that spiral motion.

Kind of cool huh?

(image from TornadoVideos.net)