Atlanta tornado was at night, video shows daytime twisters | Fact check
The claim: Video shows 2024 tornado footage from Atlanta
A July 23 Facebook video (direct link, archive link) shows a montage of tornado footage. Most of the clips show large tornadoes.
"Strong tornado in Atlanta USA 2024," reads the video's caption.
It was shared more than 70 times in 10 days.
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Our rating: False
No clips in the montage show a tornado striking Atlanta in 2024, according to an area meteorologist.
Montage includes mix of authentic and apparently fabricated footage
Dylan Lusk, a National Weather Service meteorologist who works in Georgia, told USA TODAY the video does not show the one tornado that struck the Atlanta metro area so far this year – an EF-2 on April 2. All of the tornadoes in the video are shown in daylight, but the April 2 tornado that touched down in Rockdale County, Georgia, did so at night, he said.
Lusk also said the third clip in the video (depicting a tornado by a lake) appears to be digitally created.
Fact check: Old tornado clips misrepresented as 2024 footage from Dallas
"The motion of it, the look of the cloud structures and the size are all unnatural," he said.
Other clips in the montage were uploaded to YouTube in 2016, 2020 and 2022. A still from one of the clips appears on a company blog post published in 2023.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources:
Dylan Lusk, July 31, Email exchange with USA TODAY
The Storm Chasing Channel (YouTube), July 18, 2020, 2020 VIOLENT EF-4 TORNADO!! Ashby/Dalton, MN
The Storm Chasing Channel (YouTube), May 10, 2016, Violent Katie-Wynnewood, OK Tornado 5/9/2016
Seven Top (YouTube), April 12, 2022, САМЫЕ БЕЗУМНЫЕ КАДРЫ ТОРНАДО всех времен
Storm Shelters Blog, Nov. 28, 2023, Where to Hide If I Don't Have a Storm Shelter: Tornado Survival
NOAA, accessed Aug. 1, Storm Events Database
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim video shows tornadoes in Atlanta in 2024 | Fact check