Weather Hoaxes

Internet weather hoaxes never seem to die. They might start as a joke from one friend to another but once they get forwarded and forwarded and posted on blogs and websites they take on a life of their own. At some point nobody knows the original sender and then people start embellishing the story. Here are some of the commonly circulating weather photo hoaxes. Some are pictures that were altered and others are real pictures but not associated with the weather or location that they claim to represent. Many of these have been going around for half a dozen years or more. Don't be fooled when you get a picture from a friend who got it from a coworker who got it from a cousin, and so on.

Follow the links to see the hoax photos and descriptions...

Texas Oil Rig or Memphis Tornado Hoax photo location and event. You can actually purchase a poster of the original photo taken in the early 1990s. The original image is real and it has a large waterspout, often confused with a tornado, and a lightning bolt next to it. Hoax emails over the last 15 years have attributed this to various tornado outbreaks.

Hurricane Isabel Hoax photo location and event. The photo is a real base of a thunderstorm over water but not related to a tropical storm or hurricane.

Hurricane Lili Three Waterspouts Hoax photo altered. The original image had one waterspout but somebody painted in two other spouts.

Amazing Katrina Pictures Hoax photo location and event. The images are real features of supercell thunderstorms but they are in no way related to Katrina.

Katrina Storm Surge Hoax location. The surge picture is real but it is only a small portion of a real picture that was not taken in Waveland, MS.

Mars as big as the moon. NASA debunks this Hoax too. The original email was taken out of context.

The Hands of God is a Hoax picture altered.

Security Camera Tornado in Iowa or Indiana is real but the locations keep changing.

A newly discovered planet may collide with Earth is a hoax. NASA has the real science on that and other astronomical hoaxes.