The title of this may confuse you, and believe it or not, to accomplish it, you have to do nothing at all!

However, you would make your local weather geek even happier if you would type the words hoax into your email app. and hit send!

Let me explain.

I get hundreds of emails a week/sometimes each day. I try to answer as many as I can, but I and hundreds of my fellow Meteorologists (especially those like me who work on air) are getting the same pictures sent to us over and over. If you see any of these pictures or hoaxes in your email, do us all a favour and hit REPLY ALL. Then type the words HOAX. That’s what I do.

So here is what truth I know behind these images and hoaxes.

These hoaxes get more active depending on weather and the time of year. If a hurricane develops in the Atlantic, I will start getting the picture taken from ship. If a tornado wreaks havoc on some poor town, I will get the picture of the tornado. Especially if the twister hit Oklahoma or Texas, because as everyone know, that’s where the oil is!

The Mars hoax peaks in August every year, because it got started in 2003, when Mars made a rare close approach to Earth. In 2003 it was  a little over 55 million kilometers away.  Very close by Astronomical standards, but Mars get nearly this close every 18 months or so.

I purposefully made the tornado photo small because Fred Smith has a right to be paid for his image.

Update: I received another hoax email today, but this one is not weather related. It’s an email that contains images of the attack on Pearl Harbour 7 Dec. 1941. It claims the images were just discovered and devleoped from a “Brownie” camera.

This pic is from Pearl Harbour, but it’s been in the Naval Archives for 65 + years.  So have all of the other pictures in this email. More here.

Dan

fin