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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke July 8, 2024

No, this isn’t a video of a Florida beach tornado in July 2024

If Your Time is short

  • This is old footage. There was no tornado in Miami on July 7. 

A video shared July 7 on Facebook opens with an ominous black twister swirling along a coastline. The video then cuts to another such funnel cloud among palm trees and then a shot of people rushing through a store. 

Finally, the post shows video seemingly from a   car driving toward a huge storm that spits debris as lightning flashes. 

All of the footage apparently was shot in Florida that day. 

"Florida beach today tornado," the post said, using the hashtag #Miami.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

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But there was no tornado in Miami on July 7. 

The National Weather Service reported cloudy skies and, briefly, light rain that day.

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Across the country, only three tornadoes were reported July 7, according to the weather service’s storm prediction center, two in Texas and one in Colorado.

The first tornado clip has been online long before July 7. It appeared in another video compilation we fact-checked in April that purported to show flooding in Dubai. As we reported then, the video was posted online as early as January and looks as if it could be generated by artificial intelligence. 

The Facebook post’s second clip has also been used before, to purportedly show a tornado in Dubai on July 6, in Canada in March and Cuba in February. A reverse-image search for the clip of people running through a store turns up posts purporting to show fallout from tornadoes in California and Texas and from an earthquake in New York. 

We rate claims this video shows a Florida beach tornado July 7 False.

 

Our Sources

Facebook post, July 7, 2024

Instagram post, April 17, 2024

TikTok post, Jan. 5, 2024

TikTok post, March 1, 2024

TikTok post, Feb. 2, 2024

PolitiFact, Video compilation does not show footage of Dubai 2024 flooding, April 23, 2024

National Weather Service, Weather observations for the past three days for Miami, Miami International Airport, archived July 8, 2024

Storm Prediction Center, Yesterday's Storm Reports, archived July 8, 2024

YouTube, #dubailife #Tornado em Dubai deixa estrago muito .....oq acham, July 6, 2024

 

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More by Ciara O'Rourke

No, this isn’t a video of a Florida beach tornado in July 2024

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