Claim: Photograph shows Hurricane Irene hitting the coast of North Carolina.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2011]
"Irene in North Carolina by Luanne Ferragine."
Origins: This is not a photograph of Hurricane Irene, which hit the Atlantic coast of the United States in late August 2011, reaching the shores of North Carolina. It's actually a picture of a thunderstorm off Pensacola Beach in Florida taken a few weeks before Hurricane Irene. Pictures of thunderstorm supercells (shelf clouds) are often mistaken for images of hurricanes, as was the case with a series of photos of weather phenomena which were mistakenly labeled as depicting Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
Last updated: 29 August 2011