Cyclone Montha formed over the southeast Bay of Bengal in late October 2025. It began as a low-pressure system but quickly intensified into a severe cyclonic storm. It made landfall in Andhra Pradesh bringing heavy rain, strong winds and huge damage across coastal Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and parts of Tamil Nadu. The Montha name was given by Thailand. Against this backdrop, a video of a whirlpool in the sea went viral on social media claiming it to be Cyclone Montha. A Facebook page shared this video with a caption, Montha Cyclone!! Montha means beautiful flower, this cyclone was named after the country of Thailand. A satellite image of the cyclone creating havoc in the hills was taken… See less
However, as we investigated, we came to know that the claim was false. The viral video doesn’t show Cyclone Montha. Here’s the fact check.
Fact Check
We started our investigation by taking screenshots from the viral video and conducting a reverse image search. This led us to an Instagram handle where the viral video was uploaded on 2 August 2025.
Although no information has been provided about the origin of the video in this post, it’s clear that the viral video doesn’t show Cyclone Montha as Cyclone Montha started towards the end of October 2025.
We found a similar video uploaded on a Facebook profile on 17 July 2025.
Similar posts can be seen here and here where the video was uploaded two to three months ago, which predates Cyclone Montha.
In the comment sections of these posts, a few users commented that the video might be AI-generated. AI-detection tools suggested that the video is likely to be AI-generated.
This makes it clear that the video is unrelated to Cyclone Montha.
Conclusion
From our investigation, we can say that the claim is false. The viral video doesn’t show Cyclone Montha. The video had been available on the internet before Cyclone Montha was formed.
