What’s the claim?
A video showing a heavily flooded road at night has been shared online, with claims that it depicts scenes from Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, following heavy rainfall caused by Cyclone Fengal. One user on X shared the video with the caption, “Marina Beach Road, Chennai.”
Similar posts have been widely circulated on X, Facebook, and YouTube, linking the footage to the recent rains in Chennai. Archived versions of such posts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.
However, our investigation reveals that the video is not from Chennai and predates Cyclone Fengal.
What we found
Using reverse image search, we found the same video on Newsflare (archived here), a global platform for viral videos. It was uploaded on September 3, 2024, with the title “Saudi Arabia: Heavy rain has flooded the streets of Jeddah.”
This lead was corroborated by a report from Cay Haber, a Turkish news channel, which featured a screenshot of the viral clip. The report confirmed the video was filmed in Jeddah during severe rainfall in early September 2024. Similarly, MSN published the video on September 3, 2024, further supporting this timeline.
Additional posts on X and YouTube from September 2024 also link the video to flooding in Jeddah. Archived versions of these posts are available here and here.
It’s important to note that Cyclone Fengal made landfall between Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on November 30, 2024, well after the video began circulating online.
While we could not pinpoint the exact location of the video, reports confirm that Jeddah experienced heavy rainfall on September 2, 2024. The Saudi Press Agency documented this event, and visuals of the flooding were widely shared by local media. For instance, Jeddah Now (archived here) posted a brief video of a flooded roadway on X, and Alaraby TV (archived here) uploaded similar footage, both confirming the flooding in Jeddah.
The verdict
The viral video claiming to show Marina Beach Road in Chennai after Cyclone Fengal is misrepresented. The footage is from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and dates back to early September 2024, months before the cyclone.
(This story was originally published by Logically Facts, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)
