Debunking the ‘North Dakota Supercell Viral Video’
We here at Townsquare Media in Bismarck may have been duped by a fake viral storm video.
It was reported that this particular video was taken over the weekend along I-94. This is false. The video which is only a few seconds long actually began spreading around a lot this past July.
In fact, although the TSM-Bismarck tweet that was in the story was tweeted out this weekend, the video from YouTube above was posted in mid-July.
Many people have claimed the video belongs to their area. That includes people in North Dakota saying the storm happened here.
Fortunately for us, BuzzFeed did the work for us when the video was spreading in July. BuzzFeed reported at the time that the video was being used in a Facebook Live video only to reveal that the 'live feed' was just the same looping 4 second video over and over.
Ultimately, BuzzFeed determined that the video is indeed of a real storm and is not doctored. However, it was uncovered that the storm took place in Wall, South Dakota and the video is from June of 2015.
So the next time you see the above video claiming it was from a storm that recently passed through or from a storm that occurred in North Dakota, you can proudly proclaim, #FAKENEWS!
But even we at Townsquare Media get duped. We apologize.
[BuzzFeed]