"Rain Devil", taken at sunrise with an Olympus 4.3 megapixel camera, circa 2003: Mildly texturized.

This was one of my strangest confrontations with Mother Nature. Ever. I was in my pontoon boat at the crack of dawn, heading out to the main lake to go fishing. The sky was dappled with cotton-ball clouds and colorful rays of sunshine. As I approached the Gaston Dam, it was hard not to notice a very angry-looking bank of -- what was that, a dark cloud only 100 yards across? I snapped a few pictures and gunned the boat closer. When I got about 30-feet away, I could see a downpour happening inside the cloud. Totally unreal. I zipped the pontoon boat in and out of the cloud's perimeter. Sure enough. Swirling wind and rain inside, fair weather outside. I circled the cloud entirely, humming X-Files music to myself. I popped back inside and out again. My camera got wet. So much for that.

Four or five minutes later, whoosh, the cloud was gone. I sipped a cup of coffee poured from my thermos and baited a live shad. I may even have caught a striper.

My camera was okay.