Oregon cloud video misrepresented as Ohio derailment aftermath

CLAIM: A video of a purple cloud looming over a street as a car drives underneath shows East Palestine, Ohio, after a recent freight train derailment and intentional burning of some of the hazardous chemicals on board.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video was filmed in Portland, Oregon. It appeared online as early as November 2022, long before the February 2023 derailment. Local weather experts said it looked like clouds they had seen in the state before and could be associated with a thunderstorm.

THE FACTS: Days after the train came off the tracks on Feb. 3 in the community near the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line, officials opted to release and burn toxic vinyl chloride from five of its rail cars, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. While plenty of real photos and videos captured the sight, some social media users are misrepresenting a video of a dramatic, dark cloud in Oregon, falsely claiming it is tied to the derailment.

The video, captured from a moving vehicle, shows a large, dark purple cloud overwhelming a dim blue and pink sky as the camera angle pans around an outdoor shopping center.

“The East Palestine region of Ohio, where an environmental disaster occurred, is becoming an ominous place,” read one Twitter post with the video.

But the video was taken on the other side of the country and is at least three months old.

A reverse image search traced the video back to a TikTok user who posted it twice, first in November 2022. In another video on her page, she explains that she filmed the clip herself in Jantzen Beach, Portland.

The video was filmed from North Tomahawk Island Drive at the Jantzen Beach Center shopping mall, a geolocation search confirms. The video captures a crosswalk and the hardware store Home Depot, which can also be seen on Google Street View.

It’s not clear exactly when the video was filmed, but the TikTok user said in a video in February that it was “several months old.”

Meteorologists in Oregon said it looked like clouds they had seen in the state before.

Larry O’Neill, associate professor and director of Oregon Climate Services at Oregon State University, said the cloud could have been associated with a thunderstorm, or could be a deck of altostratus clouds, a type of middle-altitude cloud that often takes up the whole sky.

“In Oregon, we get altostratus cloud bands just like this fairly regularly,” he said. “Near sunrise or sunset, they can look dramatic from the lighting even though they are completely innocuous clouds.”

The East Palestine train derailment and burn did result in large plumes of smoke and released some hazardous gases into the surrounding air. Environmental officials said monitors detected toxins in the air at the site during the burn and that officials kept people away until that dissipated.

They say continuing air monitoring done for the railroad and by government agencies — including testing inside nearly 400 homes — hasn’t detected dangerous levels in the area since residents were allowed to return. The Environmental Protection Agency has shared air monitoring results online.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.