Most of the Hailstorm images and video are not from Telangana

A post with some images and a video showing hailstorm is being shared on Facebook by many users claiming that the images and video posted are from the last week’s hailstorm in Telangana. Let’s try to analyze the claim made in the post

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Images and video of hailstorm in the post are taken last week in Telangana.
Fact: Most of the images and video in the post are taken from various sources and are presented as images of the hailstorm, which occurred last week in Telangana. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.

Some of the news agencies like Asianet News (Tamil) and Socialnews.xyz have also presented those images as Telangana’s hailstorm.

Also, news agencies like Times of India (Telugu and Tamil) and Asianet News (Telugu) have published the same video as the hailstorm in Telangana.

When images in the post are run through Google Reverse Image search, it is found that the same images were posted by different people in other contexts.

Picture 1
Posted Photo

Fact: The same photo was tweeted by Shel Winkley on 6^th April 2019 as hail in Flo (Leon County, southeast of Buffalo, Texas)

Picture 2
Posted Photo

Fact: The actual source of the photo was not found but the same image was uploaded on 9GAG website way back in October 2018. So, the photo is not from last week’s Telangana hailstorm.

What about the Video?

When the video posted on Facebook is divided into frames using Invid software and the frames are run through Google Reverse Images search, it can be found that the same video was posted on YouTube by a user on March 30^th 2018, as hailstorm in Bangladesh. So, the video being shared on Facebook and published by some of the prominent news agencies is not from Telangana as the hailstorm occurred last week whereas the same video was posted a year back. During March 2018, the same video was posted by multiple users claiming it as hailstorm in Bangladesh. You can watch the same video uploaded here & here way back in 2018. In all probability, the video could be from Bangladesh and from 2018.

Also, similar videos and images were posted and shared in different languages as incidents at various locations

Hence, most of the hailstorm images and video are not from Telangana. They have been taken from various sources and presented as Telangana’s hailstorm.