Video shows cloudburst over Austrian lake, not rainfall before flood in India's Sikkim state

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on October 17, 2023 at 10:22
  • 3 min read
  • By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
A video of a cloudburst has been viewed thousands of times in social media posts falsely claiming it shows the cause of a deadly flash flood in northeast India in early October 2023. But the video in fact shows time-lapse footage taken near Austria's Lake Millstatt in June 2018.

"A sudden cloudburst in Sikkim led to the downpour of 15 feet of water. Around 24 deaths reported so far," reads the Hindi-language caption of a Facebook post shared here on October 6, 2023.

The 15-second video, viewed more than 970,000 times, shows a cloudburst over a body of water nestled in the mountains.

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Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on October 10, 2023

The video was shared as Sikkim, a hilly state in northeast India, was hit by a torrential flash flood.

AFP reported on October 8 that the water surge came after intense rainfall burst the high-altitude Lhonak Lake, which sits at the base of a glacier in peaks surrounding the world's third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga.

Water powered downstream, adding to a river already swollen by monsoon rains, damaging a dam and sweeping away houses. At least 77 people have been confirmed dead.

The video was also shared with similar claims elsewhere on Facebook here and here.

While heavy rain contributed to the sudden lake burst that flooded Sikkim, the video was in fact filmed more than five years earlier in Austria.

Rainfall in Austria

A combination of reverse image searches and keyword searches on Google found longer versions of the video uploaded on YouTube on June 12, 2018 and on Facebook on June 13, 2018 by Peter Maier (archived links here and here).

The YouTube video is titled, "Tsunami from Heaven / Amazing Rainstorm Timelapse / Downburst / Microburst".

According to the US National Weather Service, a microburst is a localised downdraft within a thunderstorm (archived link). Wet microbursts are accompanied by a significant amount of rain or snow.

The Facebook post's German-language caption reads: "Here is some original footage with original sound, for all who still think that it was a fake." The post also links to the YouTube time-lapse video.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video used in the false posts (left) and the video uploaded to Maier's YouTube channel (right). The false posts appear to have changed the original video's aspect ratio, but AFP has highlighted matching features in the landscape.

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Screenshot comparison of the video used in the false posts (left) and the video uploaded to Maier's YouTube channel (right)

The footage corresponds to Google Street View imagery of Lake Millstatt here.

Further keyword searches found the video was used in a Washington Post article on June 19, 2018 (archived link).

The headline of the article reads, "Watch this incredible rainstorm explode over a lake in Austria". It also attributes the footage to Maier.

The same video was shared in other news articles from 2018 here and here (archived links here and here).

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