CLAIM
A number of videos are viral on social media, claiming to show high tide waves in Mumbai’s Marine Lines area. One of the videos shows huge waves hitting a road and splashing on top of it. The video was captioned “Yesterday night Marin lines Mumbai (sic)”.
The video was also shared on Twitter.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The video is a real incident but the claim is false. The high tide waves seen in the video is the effect of the Cyclone Kyarr which hit Oman on 28 and 29 October. The area seen in the video is Muttrah Corniche, a road in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
WHAT WE FOUND
On looking closely at the video, it can be seen that it is clearly not Mumbai. The look of the road in the video differs in comparison to Mumbai’s Marine Drive with respect to the structures in the area.
On conducting a reverse image search on the video, we found a news article by Khaleej Times that carried similar videos of the high waves hitting the same road. The article was headlined “High waves hit Oman as Cyclone Kyarr approaches” and stated the waves to be the effect of Cyclone Kyarr.
The Khaleej Times article identified the area seen in the video as Muttrah Corniche, a road in Muscat, Oman.
Moreover, on searching for the dome structure that can be seen in the video, we came across a Twitter post by Oman Observer, a news outlet based in Oman, which showed the dome structure in daylight from different angle, which confirmed the fact that this video is from Oman and not Mumbai.
We compared both the structures and found them to be the same.
WHAT WAS CYCLONE KYARR?
On 29 October 2019, Oman experienced higher tide waves than usual, splashing passers by in the Muttrah Corniche as an effect of Cyclone Kyarr.
The cyclone barreling across the Arabian Sea has been recorded as one of the strongest storm in the area in the last 12 years. It is the second most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Indian Ocean’s Arabian Sea, according to a report by CNN.
According to a press release by Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on 24 October 2019, they began to track an area of low pressure in the southeastern Arabian Sea which showed sign of development of cyclone. The cyclone moved from the West coast of India and moved to East central Arabian Sea.
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