Here are some photos I took last night of the clouds just before a rare thunderstorm hit Kotzebue. All I had was my cell phone so I took the photos with that. Thunderstorms in the arctic are not all that rare, but they usually occur farther inland where it gets hotter. This storm was a doozy by coastal standards, lots of thunder, lightening and buckets of rain.
This particular cloud was pretty freaky looking. My son asked me if it was a tornado. There was no visible rotation that I could see, so I didn't figure it was going to become anything serious.
.
