Not sure if this is a legitimate picture or something that was photoshopped, but pretty darn neat. If this picture is legit I'm not sure why we didn't see it on the news (national news) and I bet the person who took it had to clean their drawers afterward. According to the email it was taken 2 Apr 2009 in Texas.
__________________ "A wise man's heart directs him towards the right, but a foolish man's heart directs him towards the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2
It's better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees!
'08 Night Train
V&H Big Shots Staggered
SE Stage I A/C
V&H Fuelpak
This is the story I got when the photo was sent to me..
Of course I have NO way of knowing if it's real either..
For one thing, I don't see all the debris that should be flying around it that close.. Hmmmmm..
THIS IS A PICTURE THAT SOMEONE TOOK WHO WORKS ON AN OIL RIG.
HE WAS GOING TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE LIGHTNING AND WAS UNAWARE
OF THE TORNADO UNTIL THE LIGHTNING ILLUMINATED IT.
__________________ "Fill your hands you son of a bitch"
Rooster Cogburn
Even without debris flying around the picture COULD be real enough, I guess...but if the photographer did'nt know there was a tornado until the lightning illuminated it (uhhh) what was he just happening to be taking a picture of...in the dark on a "windy" night !?!
__________________ "If at first you don't succeed, try again...then swear"
Mark Twain
It's tough to make a call on this photo because the image quality is so bad it is hard to tell details in it. The tornado and lightning part of the photo have what appears to be different film grains from the oil rig area. This kind of tells me the photos may have been stitched together in Photoshop. There are also white outlines on the trees and the flagpole (this is called "feathering"), which tells me they were probably cut out from another photo, and the tornado/lightening was pasted behind. Unfortunately the photo quality is so bad, that that COULD be the bright white of the lightening bolt around the trees -- it is hard to tell. There is a black shadow up the oil rig, which is another indication of cut and paste feathering. It wouldn't show like that in a true photo. The tornado/lightening bolt parts seem to be a bit too large in scale for the photo. The photo iteself is such a one-in-a-billion shot due to the short length of time a lightning bolt exists, and being able to get all the elements to line up so perfectly. Frankly I'd be running like Hell If I saw that, and screw taking the photo. I rank it right up there with the "undeveloped" photo of the tourist on the top of the World Trade Center in NYC and in the background the hijacked jet is a few feet away from smacking into the building.
That picture has been around a while don't know about the validity but, it's still a cool shot. I just got again the other day saying it was from an oil rig in Texas taken some time in April this year. Got the same picture about the same time last year as well real neat work.
Hope it dont ruin anyones day to know it was a hoax....at least the part where the oil rig and tornado are together... the oil rig is real, and the water spout and lightning are real...just not all together.
__________________ Scott aka Unclepsycho
Redneck without a clue
I would think a lightning strike that big would have illuminated the whole area. Then again, nature is such a freak who knows. I know this much, with the internet, there is as much disinformation as legitimate. Great work however it was done.
Just an F.Y.I. here...but, according to P.B.S. the lightning ARC you SEE is actually FROM the ground UP...take OR leave...I for ONE don"t fully understand 0R care overall !!!
__________________ "If at first you don't succeed, try again...then swear"
Mark Twain
Pretty interesting picture 
!?! 
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