A derecho fake. The actual photo was taken in early June with a severe storm.
It seems each time there's a natural disaster or wild weather event, photos begin floating around that look too real to be true. While some of them are actual photos and videos of the weather event, let me share a few I've seen circulating days after the recent Derecho wind storm (June 29th).
The photo below claims to be the Derecho coming through the Roanoke Valley. It's a gorgeous photo, and it certainly tells of a wall cloud moving through the valley. However, the original photo was taken by Terry Aldhizer during the first week of June, NOT during the June 29th Derecho.
Here's the original story written about that photo: http://www.wdbj7.com/wdbj7-fridays-tornadoes-too-close-for-comfort-20120602,0,3163063,full.story
FAKE PHOTO OF THE JUNE 29th DERECHO (Actual photo of June 4th storms in Roanoke)
WRONG TIME OF DAY
The Derecho moved through the Roanoke Valley around at sunset, meaning it would have been much darker outside than this photo shows.
TOO MUCH RAIN
The line of storms in the photo shows a rain shaft, with heavy rain at the back of the storm. In reality, the derecho that moved through Friday night had lots of rain with it, but hardly any of it made it to the ground. The high winds kept it suspended in the clouds. The storm, for most areas, was a very dry one with some lightning from time to time.
THE WRONG DIRECTION
The derecho came from a more northerly direction and the photo shows a more westerly direction.
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Another photo that is going around is the supposed view of the power outages caused by the June 29th derecho.
The photo is one that has been circulated around the internet since 2003. In fact, it was a fake even then.
WRONG LOCATIONS
The derecho was widespread, but the power outages didn't extend all the way to Canada as depicted in the photo.
NOT A COMPLETE BLACKOUT
Even in a worst case scenerio, every single light in the northeast wouldn't have gone out as shown. The power outages took place in clusters.
REAL NASA POWER OUTAGE PHOTOS
NASA has released the following photos that are in fact real. They show the outages around some of the major cities across the northeast. Cick here or on the image below to see the BEFORE and AFTER photos from NASA.
