Claim: A video purportedly taken from the Burj Khalifa depicts Cyclone Shaheen thundering off the coast of Dubai.
Fact: The video is in fact a rendering created by digital artist Brent Shavnore in 2019 using a still image captured in Miami, Florida in the United States.
On 16 October 2021, a 24-second clip surfaced on various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, allegedly showing Hurricane Shaheen rolling off the coast of Dubai.
The posts claim that the video was shot from the famous Burj Khalifa. The captions of the majority of these posts also include verses from the Holy Quran, with the most popular shared post citing the 67th verse from Surah Az-Zumar. The verse reads as follows:
“وَمَا قَدَرُواْ ٱللَّهَ حَقَّ قَدْرِهِۦ وَٱلْأَرْضُ جَمِيعًا قَبْضَتُهُۥ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ وَٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتُ مَطْوِيَّٰتٌۢ بِيَمِينِهِۦ ۚ سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ”
[And in no way did they estimate Allah His true estimate; and the earth all together will be His grasp on the Day of the Resurrection, and the heavens will be folded in His Right Hand. All Extolment be to Him, and Supremely Exalted be He above whatever they associate (with Him)!]
A screenshot of one of the captions accompanying the posts that include verses from the 67th verse from Surah Az-Zumar of the Holy Quran
In addition to the verse, there’s a phrase in Arabic (عظمة مخلوق فكيف بعظمة الخالق سبحانه وتعالى), which is loosely translated as: “The greatness of a creature, so how about the greatness of its Creator, Glory be to Him?”
The clip is also being circulated on WhatsApp with the caption: “Hurricane Shaheen on the shores of Oman..Photographed from Burj Khalifa in Dubai..By God, look at the greatness of the Creator.”
People from Pakistan, Canada, India, Gaza City, Oman, and Sweden, among other places, shared the video on their social media pages. Three posts — here, here, and here — gained the most traction in India. The official account of the Palestinian Al-Resala Media outlet also posted the video on Twitter.
To understand how viral the video had become, Soch Fact Check looked up different combinations of the phrases listed below using CrowdTangle:
● Urdu: “شاہین عمان برج خلیفہ دبئی”
● English: “shaheen oman burj Khalifa dubai”
● Arabic: “إعصار شاهين عمان برج خليفة في دبي عظمة الخالق”
A search of Urdu phrases relevant to the video revealed multiple posts on Facebook, which were posted as original clips tagged at Dubai, especially the Burj Khalifa, and shared in numerous groups. The most shared videos garnered over 210,000 views.
Meanwhile, English-language posts did not receive as much attention, with less than 500 interactions across 15 posts. Similarly, there were only a dozen or so English-language tweets sharing the video.
Posts written in Arabic on Facebook and Instagram garnered close to 65,000 interactions; just 25 of more than 200 posts sharing the video received approximately 591,000 views. On Twitter, the video has been shared in over 60 tweets, yielding thousands of views.
Screenshots of posts on Facebook groups of Pakistanis and Swedes in Dubai, as well as of YouTube videos that falsely claimed an artist’s digital artwork as a clip showing Hurricane Shaheen
The video was also uploaded by multiple users on YouTube, with the most popular of such clips receiving upwards of 3,600 views.
Soch Fact Check investigated the claim that the video depicts Shaheen. Uploading a screenshot of the video — captured at approximately the half-way mark of the clip — to Google Reverse Image Search, turned up a possible related search for “miami storm.”
Soch Fact Check traced the origins of the video to the hyperrealistic work of Brent Shavnore, an artist who produces audio/visual media over still images; many of his pieces feature storms brewing off coasts accompanied by the sound of thunder.
The video in question was created by Shavnore in 2019, using a still image captured in Miami, Florida in the US. The artist posted it to his Instagram account on 20 May 2019.
View this post on Instagram
Fact-checkers in Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen have also deemed posts sharing the video with the claim that it depicts Cyclone Shaheen as false and misleading.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Shavnore’s work has been used to falsely portray storms being reported on in the news. In the past, his work has been pinned to Subtropical Storm Alberto, Hurricane Dorian, and a real storm over Paris.
A screenshot of Brent Shavnore’s original post on Instagram on 20 May 2019
Conclusion: The video purportedly showing Hurricane Shaheen off the coast of Dubai is in fact a digital rendering created by artist Brent Shavnore in May 2019 using a still image captured in Miami, Florida, US.
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