Fake Irene Photo - Real Source?

August 27, 2011 9:35 PM

This photo Damn im sexy is being passed around as Hurricane Irene and I have seen some say "Hurricane Irene coming ashore in VA" this is clearly not Virgina and I am 95% sure it is not even Irene. can you all help me find the actual source of this photo. Tin eye reverse image search did not work for me. Thanks!
posted by tgelston to science & nature (11 answers total)

Google image search doesn't return anything either. You're right, though - that looks like a supercell forming in a midwestern thunderstorm, not a hurricane. Other than the eyewall (which that most certainly is not), hurricanes don't have that kind of defined structure.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:00 PM on August 27, 2011

Apparently photos of this "shelf cloud" phenomenon are a common hoax when hurricanes come around.

I realize that doesn't answer where exactly the photo you linked came from, though.
posted by HeroZero at 10:12 PM on August 27, 2011

That's not Irene! It's originally from a tweet by a Baltimore meteorologist who took a picture at an August 12 Penascola storm.
posted by quadrilaterals at 10:22 PM on August 27, 2011 [12 favorites]

I've seen this photo before and it was several years ago.
posted by bz at 11:25 PM on August 27, 2011

Apparently photos of this "shelf cloud" phenomenon are a common hoax when hurricanes come around.

Hoax? I took a similar photo of Hurricane Bret at Corpus Christi, Texas in 1999.
posted by neuron at 11:36 PM on August 27, 2011

Dang Quadrilaterals - How did you do that. Thanks all for the support.
posted by tgelston at 4:34 AM on August 28, 2011

Neuron-share?
posted by Lieber Frau at 5:11 AM on August 28, 2011

I've seen this photo before as well. It really doesn't look like a hurricane. It looks more like a wall cloud from a line of thunderstorms.
posted by Seymour Zamboni at 9:03 AM on August 28, 2011

This thread actually dates the picture back two days before the tweet, so I wonder if the meteorologist picked it up from there.
posted by Addlepated at 9:30 AM on August 28, 2011

Something really similar went around during Hurricane Katrina. It was a different photograph, but the same kind of cloud formation. This picture isn't really from Katrina (though it's attributed that way in the link).
posted by Nibbly Fang at 9:58 AM on August 28, 2011

IANAMeteorologist, but I believe that's a shelf cloud. They are associated with large storm systems like supercells.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:39 PM on August 28, 2011 [1 favorite]