Does a video montage of clips contain authentic footage of Hurricane Beryl striking Texas on July 7, 2024? No, that's not true: Lead Stories connected nine of the clips to storms in Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Florida and Canada, but not Texas. There's no evidence linking the collection of 13 short clips to the Category 1 hurricane that made landfall in South Texas on July 8, 2024.
The claim appeared in a reel (archived here) on Facebook on July 8, 2024, under the on-screen title "Hurricane Beryl 🌀 in Houston,Texas USA 🇺🇸 today." The post's caption said:
Hurricane Beryl 🌀 in Houston,Texas USA 🇺🇸 today 2024 @Disasters Occur #beryl #hurricane #hurricaneberyl #hurricaneseason #tropics #texas #houston #tropical #storm #2024 #fyb #foryou #viral #fypシ゚viral #GodBless #fybシviral #flood #TornadoAlley #disasterpreparedness #GodsPlan #OMG #disaster #Weather #post #Noticias #OMG #God #Godblesseveryone
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Jul 11 15:37:39 2024 UTC)
The post provided no sources to substantiate its claim that the video montage contains authentic footage of Hurricane Beryl.
Video montage
The 62-second montage is made up of 13 different clips. Lead Stories was unable to link any of them back to Hurricane Beryl, which formed in the Atlantic Ocean on June 28, 2024.
To check the authenticity of the video, Lead Stories took a screenshot from each clip within the montage and did a reverse image search with Google Lens to find out details about their origins. We've included information for each below:
Clip 1
Nebraska tornado from April 2024.
Clip 2
Uncertain location. Various source videos predate Hurricane Beryl by up to two years and alternately credit the twister to California, Houston, the United Kingdom and Israel.
Clip 3
Nebraska tornado from April 2024.
Clip 4
Kansas tornado (and here) from April 2022.
Clip 5
Uncertain location (and here), possibly northern Michigan, based on the Google translation of the video's Arabic caption. The Facebook video dates to May 2022, more than two years before Beryl.
Clip 6
Uncertain location and year. Lead Stories couldn't find a source video for this clip.
Clip 7
Missouri tornado (and here) from May 2024.
Clip 8
Uncertain location and year. Lead Stories couldn't find a source video for this clip.
Clip 9
Uncertain location and year. Lead Stories couldn't find a source video for this clip.
Clip 10
Kansas tornado (and here) from September 2023.
Clip 11
Florida tornado (and here) from January 2024.
Clip 12
Alberta tornado (and here) from June 2024.
Clip 13
Uncertain location and year. Lead Stories couldn't find a source video for this clip.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving hurricanes and storms can be found here.
