Tornadoes are not uncommon in the east of South Africa. But the video does not show the powerful twister that devastated communities near Durban in June 2024.
MARY ALEXANDER • 20 JUNE 2024
On 3 June 2024 a tornado ripped through towns and settlements in the South African municipality of eThekwini, which includes KwaZulu-Natal province’s port city of Durban.
The twister was part of a major storm, its high winds, heavy rain and sudden flooding killing at least 11 people. Heaviest hit was the eThekwini town of Tongaat, also known as oThongathi.
A tornado is a column of wind rotating at a high speed. They develop during thunderstorms and can cause enormous damage when they hit the ground. Tornadoes are not uncommon in South Africa, particularly in the east of the country.
The South African Weather Service says the oThongathi tornado rated EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, a measure of twisters’ wind speed from one to five. Wind in an EF3 tornado can reach up to 265 kilometres an hour. These “stronger and more destructive” tornadoes only occur every decade or so.
In the week after the tornado hit KwaZulu-Natal, a video appeared on social media with the claim it showed the twister. In the clip we see a tornado barrelling through a settlement, throwing up the debris of destroyed buildings.
It’s been posted with the captions “Tornado KZN 4 June 2024” and “The #tornado seen on camera in KZN Durban”, and the hashtags #tongaattornado and #kzntornado.*
But does the video really show the KwaZulu-Natal tornado?
Drone footage of 2022 tornado in Andover, Kansas
Africa Check took a screenshot of the first frame of the video and ran it through a reverse image search.
This led us to several news reports of a tornado that tore through Andover, a town in the US state of Kansas, in May 2022. They all use the same footage, shot from a drone.
The twister was reportedly also a destructive EF3, but there were no fatalities.
In 2023 Africa Check debunked a claim that the video showed part of the destruction when an earthquake hit Morocco. But it was shot in the United States, not Morocco – or South Africa.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Published by Africa Check on 21 June 2024