This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , taken or made as part of an employee's official duties.

This image is in the public domain because it was stored on the web servers of the U.S. National Weather Service . NWS-created images are automatically public domain in the U.S. since the NWS is a part of the U.S. government. However, the NWS sites also host non-NWS images which have been submitted by individuals: these are generally shown as " Courtesy of ... ". Such images have explicitly been released to the public domain by the copyright owner as part of the upload process.

As stated at https://www.weather.gov/fsd/disclaimer : "By submitting images, you understand that your image is being released into the public domain. This means that your photo or video may be downloaded, copied, and used by others."

*A deletion discussion in November 2023 ruled that Getty Images on the web servers of NWS, are to be considered copyrighted, even without a copyright (©) watermark and are the sole exception to this rule.