People plan, build and label things; nature carries on regardless. The 18 photos below catch moments when weather, water and growing trees quietly overruled human intentions, from an Irish apple orchard stripped bare by a hurricane to a "Do Not Eat" sign slowly swallowed by the tree it was nailed to. Most were shared on Reddit, Imgur and the Russian site Pikabu in 2016 and 2017, and for each one we explain what is going on and, where it can be checked, the real event behind it.
Several pictures come from named storms of that period: Hurricane Matthew in the south-eastern United States in October 2016, Storm Xavier in Germany and Hurricane Ophelia in Ireland in October 2017. Others show the quieter physics of everyday weather: snow falling in a narrow band, a rainbow forming in a canyon, or clouds shaped by mountains. Read together, they are a reminder of how much force a single gust, downpour or snowfall can carry, and of how fast the natural world reclaims what we leave in its way. The header combines two of them, the sign and an aerial view of a thin strip of snow.
When storms rearrange the landscape
An Irish apple orchard after Hurricane Ophelia
Rows of apple trees stand almost bare while the ground beneath them is carpeted with red and green fruit. Ophelia reached Ireland on 16 October 2017, at harvest time, with gusts of up to 191 km/h recorded at Fastnet Rock off County Cork. For growers, a night like that can knock a season's crop to the ground in hours.
An orange sky over Britain
On the same day Ophelia hit Ireland, skies over much of the UK turned orange and the sun glowed red. The storm had drawn up dust from the Sahara and smoke from wildfires in Portugal and Spain, which scattered the blue light. Many people found it eerie, but it was a well-understood optical effect.
Storm Xavier topples a neat line of trees
Three roadside trees in Germany lie uprooted at exactly the same angle, as if felled by a ruler. Storm Xavier crossed Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic on 5 October 2017, killing nine people, seven of them in Germany, mostly from falling trees. Its gusts made numerous rail lines across Germany impassable.
Hurricane Matthew lifts a lawn like a carpet
When a large tree blew over, its roots pulled up a whole slab of turf, leaving a person standing under an arch of grass. Hurricane Matthew hit the south-eastern United States in October 2016 after devastating Haiti. On Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, alone, an estimated 120,000 trees came down.
Snow where nobody wanted it
The office entrance buried by a drift
A wind-blown drift has piled snow right up to the windows of a Binbank branch in Tyumen, Siberia, blocking the doorway. The person who shared it had arrived for work only to find the entrance had vanished. In open Siberian towns, strong winds can pile loose snow far higher than the actual snowfall.
Yes, that is snow
An apartment door has been opened inward, and the frame is filled with a flat white wall. It is compacted snow, pressed against the door so evenly that it looks like a second door. The photo, shared on Reddit in late 2016, is a good reason to keep a shovel indoors in heavy-snow areas.
Snow on Algerian sand
Footprints show white snow lying over red-orange desert sand, a combination that reminded many viewers of tiramisu dusted with cocoa. Snow is rare but not unknown in the Algerian Sahara: the town of Aïn Séfra, on the desert's edge, saw snow in 1979, December 2016 and January 2017, and several times since. The exact location of this photo is not confirmed.
A thin line of snow across Ohio
Seen from an aircraft window, a narrow white strip runs straight across otherwise brown Ohio farmland. Bands like this form when a single narrow band of precipitation, sometimes fed by moisture from the Great Lakes, passes over the same ground. The snow fell in one stripe and nowhere else.
A frozen waterfall
A huge column of blue-green ice hangs from a cliff, with a tiny figure at its base for scale. In long cold spells, spray and runoff freeze layer by layer until a whole waterfall becomes a pillar of ice. Frozen falls attract ice climbers, but they can collapse without warning as temperatures rise.
Water finds a way
A house that stayed dry
Floodwater surrounds a house on every side, yet the lawn and patio inside a ring of grey tubing stay dry. The tubes are a temporary flood barrier, filled with water so that their weight holds back the flood. The joke caption suggests the owner had no flood insurance, but the photo actually shows careful preparation paying off.
Ireland: just a little rain
A swan floats calmly past a window that is normally well above the river. The picture was shared in late December 2015, when a series of winter storms caused widespread flooding in Ireland and Britain. It is funny because of the swan, and sobering because of the water level.
The office "shower"
Rainwater pours through a skylight and ceiling panels in streams onto desks and computers. Flat roofs and skylights are vulnerable in sudden downpours, especially when drains are blocked. It is one of those photos whose caption, calling it just a light rain, does all the work.
A lawn that looks like a Van Gogh painting
After heavy rain, long grass in a yard has been flattened into swirls and waves, recalling the brushwork of The Starry Night. Running water combs grass in the direction of flow, leaving patterns that last until the blades recover. The owner shared it on Reddit in 2017.
Light and clouds
A rainbow in the Grand Canyon
A double rainbow drops into the Grand Canyon moments after a summer monsoon storm, with rain still falling in a grey curtain. Arizona's monsoon season, roughly July to September, brings brief, violent thunderstorms and, when the sun breaks through behind them, spectacular rainbows. The photographer, Reddit user zacharyem, caught it in 2017.
A full rainbow arch in Australia
Under a pink evening sky, a rainbow arcs in a complete semicircle over a suburban street. Full arcs need a low sun behind the viewer and rain across a wide stretch of sky. The low sun is also what gives the clouds their pink glow.
Lens-shaped clouds over Kamchatka
Smooth, stacked clouds hover like flying saucers over a road in Russia's Kamchatka peninsula. These are lenticular clouds, which form when moist, stable air flows over mountains and sets up standing waves downwind. Kamchatka's volcanoes make it a good place to see them; pilots of powered aircraft avoid them because of turbulence, while glider pilots use their lift.
Trees always win
A tree that ignored the sign
A diamond-shaped "Do Not Eat" sign was nailed to a tree, and over the years the bark has grown around and over it. Trees add new wood outward each year and slowly engulf anything fixed to them, from signs and fences to bicycles. It is also why arborists advise against nailing things to trees.
An apple logo in a birch log
The cut face of a felled birch shows a dark heartwood shape that resembles a bitten apple. Dark patches like this are often discoloured or rotting wood, which spreads unevenly through the trunk. The resemblance to a famous logo is pure coincidence.
Why nature keeps winning
None of these scenes needs a mystery to explain it. Wind piles loose snow far deeper than the actual snowfall, storms arrive at the worst time for harvests, and water always flows downhill into whatever we build in its way. Trees, given time, grow around anything. What makes the photos funny is the contrast between human order, neat rows, signs and offices, and forces that do not notice it.
They also carry a practical message. Flood barriers, cleared drains, tree surveys and a shovel by the door all make a difference when the weather turns.
Sources: Wikipedia: Hurricane Ophelia (2017); Wikipedia: Cyclone Xavier (2017); Wikipedia: Hurricane Matthew; Wikipedia: Aïn Séfra; Wikipedia: Lenticular cloud. Photo credits are given under each picture: KRua, Zega, Palpat1ne, Ground55, Enfantterrrible, gnom22, holykash and khemfrov on Pikabu; Xingua92, Elementalillness, zacharyem, ericb303, epicmoe, Hellholder and age104 on Reddit; thisisnotmyfault on Imgur.
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