Fact Check: Viral video shows the first snowfall in the last 100 years in Saudi Arabia due to global warming. NO
To understand if it ever snows in Saudi Arabia, we searched with the keywords “Snowfall in Saudi Arabia” and found..
A video showing two camels sitting amidst heavy snowfall is viral on social media, especially on Twitter, with the claim that the video shows snowfall in Saudi Arabia, a first in the last 100 years. The video is shared with the implication that because of global warming, it is snowing in Saudi Arabia.
The video of snowfall is shared with the caption “Global warming strikes again, First snow in Saudi Arabia in 100 years.”
Fact Check: The claim is misleading. The video of snow in the desert of Saudi Arabia is from 2021.
When the key frames extracted from the video are searched using reverse image search, we found several results from February 2021.
According to GulfToday.ae, snow has blanketed parts of the countries in the middle east including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. The Tabuk region of Saudi Arabia has also experienced snowfall. The adjoining mountainous region was covered with white snow. The video of a couple of camels seen sitting on a path covered in snow has gone viral.
https://www.gulftoday.ae/news/
The video was also published on khou.com also.
But this is not the first time there was snowfall in Saudi Arabia, a report published on thenationalnews.com in November 2020, showed a herd of camels galloping over a thin layer of snow in the sand dunes near Ash Shuqayq in the north of Saudi Arabia.
To understand if it ever snows in Saudi Arabia, we searched with the keywords “Snowfall in Saudi Arabia” and found a tourist website visitsaudi.com, where it was stated that ‘to experience a winter snowscape like no other, head north in Saudi. There is snowfall in the mountains of the northern regions of the country.
https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/
There were reports of snow in the Tabuk region of Saudi Arabia in 2018 also.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/
Hence, the claim that it snowed in Saudi Arabia for the first time in 100 years is misleading. Several parts in the northern regions of Saudi Arabia witnessed snowfall in the last few years.