Captured through YouScoop and StormWatch, the year 2009 in pictures

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The year 2009 will be remembered as a year filled with the most shocking tragedies, heart-warming success stories, and outrageous controversies.

It was also the year that images from these incidents were captured not only by professional journalists but by citizens who rose to the occasion and decided to document history on their own.

Indeed, 2009 was also the year of citizen journalism in the Philippines with Filipinos using the internet and social media to get important information within everybody's reach. It was also the year that GMANews.TV launched YouScoop to encourage more netizens to get involved in the name of public interest.

As a new year is ushered in, GMANews.TV compiled the best and most powerful photographs submitted to GMANews.TV's StormWatch and YouScoop as a way of recapping the exciting and tumultuous year that is about to come to pass.

(VIEW FLASH ANIMATION TO SEE THE PICTURES)

The most common contributions to YouScoop, images of fires are easily captured by residents with digital cameras as the incidents - which usually last for hours - unfold. In early December, a fire swallowed an entire row of classrooms in the northeastern Mindanao province of Dinagat Islands, leaving students with no place to hold classes. Robenson Magno

Though not as destructive as its predecessors, typhoon Santi also struck down a number of bridges and flooded thousands of houses in late October. YouScoop contributor Ronnie Landayan captured through his digital camera waves that raged on the Manila Bay caused by Santi's strong winds.

Pepeng's winds were so strong it toppled the Salacop Bridge in Kapangan, Benguet in October, cutting off several towns and leaving them with no electricty and no access to the city proper. Jonah Balao

A quick look from above one of the high-rise buildings in Quezon City showed this mind-choking view of thick smog enveloping the vast skies above the city. Jeanette Mangahas

Not even this truck was spared from the cascading muds from a landslide caused by Pepeng's rains in Ocober in La Trinidad, Benguet. Eliza Consul

Thick billowing smoke emanating from a huge fire in Bangkal, Makati City dwarfs a passenger bus plying the nearby Metro Manila Skyway days before Christmas. The fire engulfed 700 houses and left 3,000 people with gloomy holidays. Stephen Cordova

Trained dogs along the intersection of the busy Taft Avenue and UN Avenue in Manila are made to don Santa hats in November as they endear pedestrians into tossing some loose change for the holidays. Archie David

In Itogon, Benguet, Pepeng pummeled a steep hillside in October until part of it gave way, causing homes to crash into a deep ravine. Jonee Mejia

Decorated with bright Christmas lights during the holidays, the city hall of Asia's Latin City - Zamboanga City - becomes a tourist attraction in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Jaceo Arceo

Showing Filipinos' world-class persistence and ingenuity, people from the Laguna State Polytechnic University - Los Baños gathered items destroyed by recent typhoons and piled them up to form one of the more innovative-looking Christmas trees in the Philippines this year. Osnel Melodillar

While most weather disturbances like Ondoy and Pepeng tormented Filipinos in Luzon, others just brought drizzles that left behind breath-taking rainbows such as this one streaking across the Mandaluyong skyline on November 4. Eric Antonio

- Flash developed by Analyn Perez, GMANews.TV