Who and Where
Every photo must have been taken in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Maine. The location must be verifiable by location data or Map data. You must be 18 or older to enter, but all experience levels are welcome. Organizers and Judges may not compete.
Categories and Entry Limits
Submit 4 photos per person at $2 USD per image. Do not enter the same photograph, an alternate crop, or a near-identical burst frame more than once. Choose the strongest fit for each category. Organizers may move a photograph to a more suitable category and will tell the entrant before judging. Additionally, if a photo violates any rule, a Judge can have it removed from the contest entirely.
Real Photographs and Honest Editing
No: AI-generated imagery, generative fill, sky replacement, added or removed objects, composites, or staged weather effects.
You must have personally taken the photograph and hold ALL copyrights necessary to enter it.
Cropping, straightening, exposure, white balance, color, contrast, sharpening, lens correction, sensor-dust removal, and noise reduction are allowed if they preserve the scene. Ordinary phone capture is allowed if it does not fabricate content.
Keep the original file and metadata. Finalists will be asked to supply original RAW files to verify authorship, location, date, and editing. Additionally, finalists will be asked to disclose what edits they made to the photo before moving on. Inability to verify may make an entry ineligible. Avoid watermarks, borders, and identifying text on the judging image.
What to Submit
Upload one JPEG per submission, no larger than 10 MB, with a recommended long edge of at least 2,000 pixels. Keep the full-resolution original. Provide a title, capture date, town or general area, state, category, short description, and contact email. Do not include home addresses, exact sensitive locations, or other people’s private information. Describe the weather accurately; do not claim an unverified tornado or storm classification. The upload confirmation and entry reference indicate receipt only, not acceptance or a prize. Entries go through eligibility review before any gallery publication.
Safety and Respect Come First
Do not trespass, enter closed areas, drive through floodwater, interfere with emergency responders, or take photographs while driving. Respect private property, wildlife, disaster survivors, and evacuation orders. Entries with credible evidence of unsafe or unlawful conduct may be disqualified. Organizers will review concerns and request context rather than infer misconduct solely from a dramatic image. No extra credit is given for risk-taking. Obtain any required permissions for recognizable people and private property access.
How Photographs are Judged
Each judge will make their own score based on: Weather Storytelling and Relevance (35 points); Composition (30 points); Technical Execution (20 points); Originality and Emotional Impact (15 points), with 100 being the maximum. The score of a photo will only be used as an internal scoring system for judges to deliberate on and will not be made public.
Equipment cost, follower counts, judges' personal bias, and personal risk are not scoring factors.
If 2 or more photos in a category have the same amount of total points, whichever has the higher average Weather Storytelling and Relevance score between all the judges will be chosen as the winner. If that average is also the same, the average Composition, Technical Execution, and Originality and Emotional Impact scores will be taken in that order until a winner is chosen.
Your Photographs Remain Yours
By entering the contest, you would grant the organizers a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to review and judge the entry and to display it, with your chosen credit, in this edition’s gallery, winner announcements, and organic contest social posts for 24 months after winners are announced.
Only resizing, compression, and layout crops that do not materially change the photograph are permitted for display. No sale, merchandise, paid advertising, sponsor reuse, AI training, or transfer of image rights is included. You retain copyright.
You may request withdrawal before judging begins. Afterward, you may request removal from future displays; completed judging and already distributed materials cannot be recalled. The final organizer contact and removal process must be published before launch.
Review and Contest Administration
Organizers may reject ineligible, plagiarized, deceptive, abusive, privacy-invasive, or unverifiable entries. Gallery selection is separate from judging and is not a finalist announcement.
If a problem is found, organizers will explain the reason and offer 7 calendar days for an entrant to provide clarification where practical. Verified winners will be contacted privately and asked to respond within 7 calendar days; an unresponsive or ineligible winner may be replaced by the next-ranked eligible entrant.
Deadlines
Entries must be taken between January 1st to december 31st of the contest year and be submitted by Febuary 1st the Following year. I.e. if the contest of for 2026 all photos must be taken in that year and submitted by Febuary 1st 2027.