A video of a terrifying tornado in Tennessee today has gone viral! Take a look at the viral video, and find out why it’s fake!
Video Gone Viral : Tornado In Tennessee Today!
People are sharing a 3-minute long video on WhatsApp and X (formerly Twitter), which purportedly shows a terrifying tornado that hit Tennessee today!
This video went viral after Hurricane Helene hit the southern part of Tennessee causing significant flooding and destruction.
And why would it not? It has incredible images of hurricanes and tornadoes, accompanied by loud screams of people purportedly experiencing the tornado in Tennessee.
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Why video of terrifying tornado in Tennessee today is fake!
This is yet another example of fake videos circulating on WhatsApp and X (formerly Twitter), and here are the reasons why…
Tennessee was struck by Hurricane Helene
Let me start by pointing out that Tennessee was not hit by a tornado in September or October 2024, when the video went viral. The southern part of Tennessee was struck by Hurricane Helene on 27 September 2024.
Tornadoes and hurricanes both have extremely strong horizontal winds that swirl around a centre. But they are different weather phenomena.
The most obvious difference according to NASA is this – hurricanes are about a thousand times larger than tornadoes. Tornadoes are rarely more than a few hundred feet across when they touch the ground, while hurricanes are anywhere from 60 to over a thousand miles across.
In addition, hurricanes form over warm waters of tropical oceans, and can persist for days or weeks, while travelling thousands of miles. Tornadoes, on the other hand, form on land, and typically only lasts a few minutes and rarely travel more than 10-20 miles.
The video clips were digitally manipulated
Whoever created the viral video of tornadoes in Tennessee digitally edited the different video clips, flipping some of them horizontally – presumably to make it harder for people to run a reverse image search, and check the veracity of the video.
The fake video creator also sped up many of the video clips, and added voices of people screaming, to make it more terrifying. You can even hear gunshots at one point!
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The video clips are old or fake
The awesome WebQoof fact checking team at The Quint did a great job tracing the origin of the many video clips. Here are what they found (and some of what I found).
This video was originally posted by a TikTok video creator (@rtsarovvideo) on 18 April 2024, so it obviously has nothing to do with Hurricane Helene, which only hit Tennessee on 28 September 2024.
@rtsarovvideo appears to be posting digitally-created tornado videos. A closer inspection of the video suggests that this particular video was created using an AI video generator.
The fake news creator flipped the original TikTok video horizontally, possibly to make it more difficult for fact checkers to locate the original video.
The same TikTok video creator appears to have also created this video. He/she likely added the tornado digitally to the original video, because the people on the beach don’t appear to be worried, or running for shelter.
This video is also likely to be digitally-created, although neither the WebQoof team nor I could trace its origin. However, it was posted early as 14 October 2023, so it obviously has nothing to do with Hurricane Helene.
In addition, the video shows a waterspout – not a tornado or a hurricane. And the location of this video has been attributed to the North Sea, Canada, Jamaica, and even Dubai!
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This video of a dog on the road appears to be posted on TikTok on 12 July 2023 – more than a year ago. Obviously, this video has nothing to do with Hurricane Helene in September 2024!
This video shows a tornado demolishing a building in Lincoln, Nebraska on 26 April 2024. Obviously, this video has nothing to do with Tennessee, or Hurricane Helene.
This video of a cow running during a storm is also old, and was originally posted by CBS News on 27 April 2023. Again, the fake video creator flipped this video horizontally.
The video also had nothing to do with a tornado or hurricane in Tennessee – it was a hailstorm in North Texas.
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This is also an old video. It shows a tornado in Andover, Kansas, and was posted on 29 April 2022 – more than 2.5 years ago.
This video was originally posted by Reuters in May 2024, and shows a doorbell camera capturing tornado winds knocking down trees in Michigan. Not only is Michigan over a thousand kilometres from Tennessee, it happened months earlier.
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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