Old videos shared as visuals of Chennai city affected by the recent Cyclone Mandous - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
December 12, 2022
Two videos are being shared on social media, claiming them as visuals of the situation in Chennai city due to the recent Cyclone Mandous. Let’s verify the truth behind these videos.
Video 1:
A viral post claims this video shows Chennai’s Marina beach. Sea water can be seen reaching the main roads in this video. Let’s look at the facts behind this claim.
Claim: Visuals of Chennai’s Marina beach affected by Cyclone Mandous.
Fact:  Although this was shot at Marina beach in Chennai, the video is from November 2021. There are a few YouTube videos from 2021 which confirm the same. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
To know the veracity behind the claim, we performed a keyword search on the internet and found a few YouTube videos (here and here) which show the same visuals as in the viral post. One of them is an extended version of the original video and was uploaded to YouTube on 12 November 2021 (here). Reportedly, Chennai saw floods during this period last year (here). The viral post falsely shares those old visuals from 2021 as a recent video of flooding at Chennai’s Marina beach.
Video 2:
In this video, a motorcycle is toppled by heavy rain with winds. The post description of this video in Tamil translates to ‘it is raining in Chennai today.’ Let’s see the facts behind this claim.
Claim: Visuals of heavy winds and rains in Chennai.
Fact: This video was uploaded to Twitter by Pradeep John (Tamil Nadu Weatherman) in May 2022. As per the tweet, this video was shot at Kundrathur in Chennai. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Performing a reverse image search on google reverse image search led us to a tweet that contained the viral video. In his tweet, verified Twitter user Pradeep John (Tamil Nadu Weatherman) uploaded this video with the caption, ‘ Kundrathur nil visibility downpour video courtesy Nandalumar.‘ This was posted back in May 2022.
Kundrathur nil visibility downpour video courtesy Nandalumar pic.twitter.com/ly5hF0IkFJ
To sum up, both videos that are shared as visuals of floods and heavy rain situation in Chennai city due to the Cyclone Mandous are old.