Old footage of a 'rare fire rainbow' in Singapore is being shared as if it is recent
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 7, 2019 at 10:45
- 4 min read
- By AFP Singapore
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The video, in which a multi-coloured orb of light appears to emerge from a cloud, was broadcast live on Facebook here on February 20, 2017, by user Natalie Claudia Wong.
Wong's four-minute, 46-second Facebook video is embedded below:
International news organisations reported the occurrence at the time, for example this BBC report dated February 21, 2017, headlined "Singapore 'fire rainbow' cloud phenomenon lights up sky", which contains multiple other images of the weather event.
Many similar articles were published in February 2017, for example here in the Straits Times, here in the NZ Herald, here in the Irish Times, here in the Daily Mail and here in The Independent.
Below is a collage featuring screenshots of these reports:
Some of the reports say that the technical name for this phenomenon is a "circumhorizontal arc" – described on the website of the World Meteorological Organization here.
But local news website Today Singapore spoke to the city-state's Meteorological Service who said the event was in fact an "iridescent cloud" in this report dated February 25, 2017.
Wong also shared photos of the cloud in another February 2017 Facebook post here:
Since February 2017, clips from Wong's video have recirculated repeatedly online, for example in this Facebook post dated November 9, 2018, which has been viewed around 33,000 times.
That post, shared by a page called "News Now", has the headline "Rare Fire Rainbow Beams in the Sky" and the caption "Happy Friday! Credit: ViralHog", but it does not give the date the footage was filmed.
More recently, the same footage has resurfaced in news reports and social media posts, some of which present it as breaking news.
For example, this article published on May 31, 2019, by Russian government-owned news website Sputnik News, contains a one-minute, 20-second clip that matches part of the video shared by Wong.
Below is a screenshot of the report:
The article includes phrases such as: "A unique rainbow-like celestial phenomenon has been spotted in Singapore" and "Singapore witnessed a similar sky phenomenon two years ago".
But, as shown in the comparison image below, the video embedded in the Sputnik article (R) matches the first part of Wong's 2017 video (L):
The video embedded in the Sputnik article was published on Facebook here on May 31, 2019, by a page called All Singapore Stuff, which has more than 440,000 followers.
That Facebook video has been viewed more than 165,000 times.
It has the title and caption "Rare fire rainbow in Singapore" but does not give the date the original footage was filmed.
Below is a screenshot of the video on the All Singapore Stuff page:
The same one-minute, 20-second video was also shared in this Twitter post on May 29, 2019, which has been retweeted hundreds of times. It is captioned: "Rare fire rainbow beams over Singapore sky..."
Other news websites also reported the phenomenon in May 2019, without indicating that the images were from 2017.
For example, this Coconuts Singapore report, published just hours after the Sputnik report on May 31, 2019, and which also contains the same All Singapore Stuff video, begins:
"A rare and colourful rainbow has been spotted in the Singapore sky, as netizens took to social media today to share videos and photos of this natural marvel, with some suggesting that it could be a fire rainbow."
The Coconuts report also includes a phrase that is very similar to one in the Sputnik report, saying:
"A similar multi-coloured glow actually appeared in Singapore two years ago, although experts from the Meteorological Service Singapore claimed that the unusual sight was an iridescent cloud, not a fire rainbow."
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
