A viral video showing a strong storm destroying properties has been linked to Cyclone Chido in Mayotte, France.
Frames from different videos were compiled into the one-minute video where rooftops, trees, and containers were seen being brought down by a storm, with flood covering the major part of a city.
The video posted by @World_News on TikTok with the caption “Cyclone Chido hits Mayotte” has garnered over 6,369 likes, 366 comments 2,183 shares, and 1,157 bookmarks.
CYCLONE CHIDO
On December 14, Cyclone Chido hit the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, killing about 35 people and destroying properties.
While Cyclone Chido is not the first to hit the city, it is said to be the worst storm to hit Mayotte in 90 years bringing winds of about 260 km/h (160mph).
The tropical Cyclone which gradually moved from Mayotte to south-easthern Africa has killed more than 94 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi.
Cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons are all types of storms mainly characterised by winds exceeding 119 km/h (74 mph). The difference is that the name varies depending on the region where the storm occurs—it is a hurricane in the Atlantic and northeast Pacific, a typhoon in the north-west Pacific, and a cyclone in the south Pacific and Indian Ocean.
While cyclones and tornadoes are intense spiraling storms, they differ significantly in size, structure, and formation. Tornadoes are much smaller in scale, usually only a few hundred meters wide, usually violent, form over land within a thunderstorm, and last only a few minutes.
VERIFYING THE CLAIM
CableCheck divided the videos into frames to verify the claim and subjected each to a reverse image search using Google Lens.
Checks by CableCheck showed that the first image (from 0:01 to 0:08) is from a video that surfaced online on July 16 and linked to the Urbandale storm in Iowa, USA.
The image above (0:08 to 0:13) is from a video posted by Fox Weather on YouTube in 2022 that was linked to the Gaylord Michigan tornado that year.
CableCheck found that image three (0:13 to 0:18) is from the Missouri tornado which took place in May.
Checks by CableCheck showed that image four (0:18 to 0:25) is from Hurricane Milton in Florida that occurred on October 10.
We traced image five (0:25 to 0:29) to a post on X, which was linked to a storm in Cuernavaca City of Mexico on May 19.
Image six (0:36 to 0:41) was traced to typhoon Capricorn in Vietnam which took place in September.
Image seven (0:48 to 0:55) surfaced online in October during hurricane Helene in Florida, USA.
The image above (0:55 to 1:00) is from 2023 and was linked to the strong winds in Sumaré, a city in Brazil.
VERDICT
The viral video is not from Cyclone Chido in Mayotte, France.
