Beautiful, Dramatic Storm Clouds in Vermont

We had our first round of rambunctious thunderstorms of the season in Vermont yesterday. Lots of severe weather alerts, dark clouds, lightning, hail, you name it.

Luckily, the storms didn't turn out to be strong enough to cause a huge amount of damage, but they did provide for some great clouds.

You can see them in the photos in this post. The first one appears to show a dark, dangerous funnel cloud ready to hit the ground and wreck a town, but it was just a scud cloud ahead of the storm.

The second shows a variety of colors, hues, textures and shapes. The blue color in the upper center of the photo hinted at approaching hail, and I wasn't disappointed. It hailed hard where I was in Hinesburg, Vermont. Though there was a lot of hail, it was only pea sized, so it didn't really wreck things.

The third photo shows a new billowing thunderstorm building to the west as the first thunderstorm of the day was just beginning to depart to the east. That billowing cloud turned into the storm that created the hail I talked about in Hinesburg.

The fourth photo shows a view of New York's Adirondacks from South Burlington, Vermont, as the mountains sat under volatile clouds, between two thunderstorms.

As you can see, I can never get sick of the rich variety of clouds and conditions in thunderstorms. Yes, I'm such a weather geek.  So what? I'm already ready for the next round of thunderstorms, whenever they'll hit.

Scroll down to the bottom for a video I took of the storm in progress. Not one of those Tornado Chaser videos, exactly, but it's still a vicarious moment if you like thunderstorms. The hail really gets going a little less than a minute into it.