Unrelated Photos Shared as Cars Melting in Kuwait Due to Heat

Some of these photos have gone viral and have been doing the rounds on social media since 2018.

A set of photos claiming to show the effect of increasing temperatures has been shared by social media users with a claim that they show the current situation in Kuwait, after the country recorded a high of 59 degree Celcius.

However, we found that the photos were all old and not related to the weather in Kuwait. One of the photos in the collage was from a fire that took place in Arizona, USA in 2018 and others were from different times ranging from 2016-2019. Moreover, the highest recorded temperature on Earth so far is 56.7°C, which was measured on 10 July 1913 at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California, USA.

Some of these photos have gone viral before and have been doing the rounds since 2018.

CLAIM

The photos were shared with a caption that read, "#BigBreaking: 59° degree temperature recorded in Kuwait yesterday".

The same caption was used by several Facebook and Twitter users.

Archives of more such posts can be found here, here, and here.

We also found that the same photo was shared with a similar claim in 2019. That post said that the temperature recorded in Kuwait was 63 degrees Celcius.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Photo 1:

We conducted a reverse image search and found a fact-checking article by Snopes, published on 10 July 2018. The article said that the photo was from Arizona, USA where the vehicles were damaged due to a fire at a construction site. The incident was reported by Tuscon News Now and Tuscon.

According to the reports, "a massive fire that ripped through a construction site south of the University of Arizona caused an estimated $1 million in damage."

Several people were evacuated and at least 15 cars were damaged by the fire, the report said quoting a Tucson Fire Department spokesman.

Photo 2:

A reverse image search of the second image showing a trash can melting on on a street returned results from Facebook, from 2019. The photo was seen in a Facebook post published on 20 August 2019 by ‘Chtoukapress’ with a caption when translated from Arabic, said, ‘The heat, my Lord, safety’. Chtoukapress is a Moroccan electronic newspaper.

Therefore, the photograph was not recent.

Photo 3:

The photo of a cooked egg on the street was also not recent. We found the same photo in an article published on Kuwait Local on 23 July 2016. According to the article, legislators had proposed reducing the working hours of employees in Kuwait because of increasing temperatures.

Another article in "GreenNews" also carried the same photograph that talked about Kuwait recording the highest temperature in the Eastern Hemisphere at 54 degrees Celcius.

Photo 4:

The fourth photograph has been around on Facebook since 2018. While we could not find the source of the image, we found the photo posted on Facebook on 6 July 2018.

The satirical post said, "Just open the geography book, the third average page 36, the third line is written, Iraq has a moderate summer climate!" mocking the heat.

According to a news report published on Gulf News, Kuwati recorded the highest temperature of 2021 on 16 June at 53.2°C. The world record for the highest temperature on Earth was recorded at Greenland Ranch, Death Valley, California, USA and it was 56.7°C.

Evidently, the claim that Kuwati recently recorded 59°C temperature, by melting cars and other objects is false.

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