Claim: A combination of videos show the destruction caused by a storm, likely Éowyn, in the UK in January 2025.
Fact: None of the visuals are from any of the storms that hit the UK in January 2025. Two of the videos are old and unrelated whereas a third one was created using digital manipulation tools.
On 26 January 2024, Facebook user ‘Elyn Jean Maglasang Elaba’ posted (archive) a six-second footage comprising three videos, all depicting severe storms. It includes superimposed text that reads as follows:
“cyclone Hit 🎯 united kingdom today 😱 omg uk storm Jesus name 🙏 24/01/2025”
A digital creator with over 47,000 followers, the user wrote the following caption with the clip:
“😲😱Ang Dami Ng Pagbabago sa PANAHUN ngayun [The amount of change these days]”
Cluster of storms in UK
A cluster of storms, including Ivo, Herminia, and Éowyn, hit the UK in January 2025. The third one was “the fifth named storm of the season” as storms are named depending on their severity and potential to cause disruption.
In a press release issued on 23 January 2025, ahead of the Storm Éowyn, the UK Met Office issued Red Weather Warnings, which are “for the most severe weather which represents a likely danger to life and severe disruption”, according to Chief Meteorologist Paul Gundersen.
Éowyn was “probably the strongest storm” to hit the UK in at least 10 years, the BBC reported on 25 January 2025, citing the Met Office. It noted that at least one person had died.
On 27 January 2025, the UK Met Office said that “National Severe Weather Warnings for wind and rain [remain] in place”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the all three videos in the footage and found that none of them are related to the recent storms in the UK.
We traced the first clip to a TikTok account named @rtsarovvideo, which posted it twice — on 20 June 2024 and on 9 August 2022. The user wrote, “Tornado Montreal Extended #Ai #GEN3 #newai #tornado,” as the caption of the 2024 post, whereas that of the 2022 post stated, “monstrous #tornado #toyurus #lasalle”.
Lasalle is a town in Ontario, Canada.
According to @rtsarovvideo, their videos are “real & edited”. This is corroborated by the unnatural clouds and lightning seen in the clip.
We were able to trace the second video back to 8 September 2024 when it was posted here on the Facebook page ‘AN Tours Vietnam’. A photo from the same clip was also posted by Chùa Bửu Nghiêm, a Buddhist temple in Vietnam, on 13 September 2024. At that time, Typhoon Yagi had hit the country; therefore, it is possible that the footage is from that storm.
Similarly, the third clip also appears to be from Typhoon Yagi as it was posted on TikTok on 10 September 2024 with the caption, “Typhoon Yagi in China.”
However, since we did not find a definitive source of origin for the second and third videos, we can conclude that the clips are not from 2025 and, therefore, unrelated to the January 2025 storms in the UK.
Virality
The Facebook reel has been viewed over a million times.
Conclusion: None of the visuals are from any of the January 2025 storms in the UK. Two of the videos are old and unrelated whereas a third one was created using digital manipulation tools.
Background image in cover photo: Raphael Rychetsky
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