A video accompanying a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that lightning strikes a river. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of lightning striking a river.
Fact: The video does not show lightning striking a river. It was taken by a Finnish Water Engineering Company named ‘Rannikon Merityö’ which handles dredging, excavation, and beach construction; and according to company’s webpage, the excavation is carried out by placing an underwater special explosive. When the video is slowed down it is clear that the lightning doesn’t come from the sky, but from up the hill. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search of the screenshots of the video is done, the same video was published on YouTube by the channel named ‘Rannikon Merityö’ on 21 December 2012. The title of the video in English translates to ‘Drilling rig, part 3: Blasting’, and the description in the video says that ‘In this video, we deepen the waterway’. According to the Rannikon Merityö website, it is a Finnish water engineering company. Also on the website, the same video was included on a page about underwater mining and blasting. According to the explanation on the page, excavation is carried out by placing an underwater special explosive in the boreholes, which is immersed in the holes drilled in the rock.
When the video is slowed down it is clear that the lightning doesn’t come from the sky, but from up the hill. At the 7-second mark in the video, moments before the impact, a bright coloured line can be seen up from the hill.
A similar explosion can be seen in a YouTube video showing the removal of the City Mill Dam in the U.S. State of Georgia’s Chattahoochee River.
To sum it up, video showing a controlled explosion by an Engineering company is passed off as lightning strike on a river.
