Photos: Tubular Cloud and One Big Raindrop

Aug 18, 2011; 5:13 PM ET

I wanted to call out a couple of photos that I took during the severe storms here in State College, PA, earlier this week. First, I got lucky during the heavy rain shooting this raindrop splashing on my back porch railing.

I even shot this without a tripod. I used Oloneo PhotoEngine to process it with HDR to bring out the effect.

And second, what I call a “tubular cloud.” This was the first one of these that I had ever captured.

I believe it’s something akin to the “Delaware Waterspout Cloud” that I blogged about three years ago, and I’ve seen the formation online several times since.