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No, a tornado did not carry a mobile home 130 miles away. That's fake news
It’s not true that a tornado lifted a mobile home and carried it over 130 miles until it landed in a rural Kansas area. And since that never happened, it’s also fake news that there were five family members inside that house who came out of the ordeal without major injuries.
A website called Daily Native American, dailynative.us, posted the fabricated story on Aug. 6, 2017, but the claims have circulated for years. Satirical website worldnewsdailyreport.com posted the same story back in 2015.
"A family from Tulsa, Oklahoma, underwent the scariest experience of their life yesterday, when their mobile home was carried over 130 miles by a tornado, landing in a rural Kansas area. Five members of the same family were inside the building during its ‘flight’, and all of them have miraculously survived without injuries," said the dailynative.us post. "41-year old Dorothy Williams, was at home with her husband, her son, and her two brothers, when their mobile home was lifted off the ground by an F4 tornado."
The story claims the tornado carried the house for more than four hours "sometimes at altitude of more than 1,000 feet," across northern Colorado, southern Kansas and then dropped it on a car outside of Wichita, "129.5 miles (208.5 kilometers) away from its point of origin."
We asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration what they thought of the dailynative.us post.
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"That's not possible," said Harold Brooks, senior research scientist at NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory.
Most tornadoes last less than 10 minutes and travel an average 3.5 miles.
Stories of papers, checks and other feather-light objects traveling 100 miles do sometimes check out. But heavy objects cannot cover the same ground.
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Brooks said even in the "most violent events," wind could not usher a Tulsa mobile home northwest over Colorado before landing near Wichita in southern Kansas. "That’s a rare direction for even paper to get thrown over significant distances," he said.
Dailynative.us does not feature an "About Us" page detailing who’s behind it or what is it’s purpose.
Allusions to The Wizard of Oz did not go unnoticed to some readers.
"Sorry is it just me or has someone else heard all this before? …Dorothy? The house lands safely (somewhere in Kansas)? … was she wearing red shoes by any chance? And was there a wicked witch in the car that the house landed on?" wrote a worldnewsdailyreport.com reader in August 2017.
A post from dailynative.us headlined, "Tornado carries mobile home 130 miles, family inside unharmed" is fake. We rate it Pants on Fire!
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Our Sources
Dailynative.us, Tornado carries mobile home 130 miles, family inside unharmed, Aug. 6, 2017
Dailynative.us, Terms of Service, accessed Aug. 9, 2017
Worldnewsdailyreport.com, Tornado carries mobile home 130 miles, family inside unharmed
Snopes, Tornado Carries Mobile Home 130 Miles, Family Inside Unharmed?, published, Aug. 23, 2016, updated May 1, 2017
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, The Online Tornado FAQ, last modified May 1, 2017
Email exchange NOAA press office, Aug. 8, 2017
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More by Miriam Valverde
No, a tornado did not carry a mobile home 130 miles away. That's fake news
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