A video purporting to show tornadoes in Canada twists the truth

In a video spreading on social media, huge tornadoes churn through landscapes, appearing to leave swaths of destruction in their wake in … Canada? 

"Tornado storm in Canada," the text over the video says. 

An Aug. 30 Facebook post sharing the clip was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Canada has tornadoes — more than 80 so far in 2024 — but not like the ferocious storms in the video. 

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David Sills, executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ontario, told PolitiFact the video is "completely fake" and "computer-generated." 

"Not only do the renderings not reflect an actual storm in Canada," Sills said, "they do not reflect actual storms anywhere."

The videos include telltale signs of artificial intelligence fabrication, including blurring, unrealistic textures, artificial lighting and unrealistic audio — it sounds like the same screams and audio track in almost every clip. Plus, the first clip in the video has been shared by the same Facebook account and falsely described as showing a "tornado in Dubai." That video was shared as a mirror image of the one seen in the Canada claim.

We rate claims this video shows tornadoes in Canada False.