Viral Video Claiming Snowfall in Kakarvitta Is Deep-Fake

Claim
Kakarvitta area of Jhapa district received heavy snowfall.
Fact
The viral video is deep-fake.

A video claiming that the Kakarvitta area of Jhapa district has received a heavy snowfall has gone viral on TikTok.

TikTok user @bidiya_dahal_timsina posted a video showing vehicles moving on the road in a snowy setting. The entire area including the road is seen covered in snow. Audio accompanying the video says, “Breaking news, Kakarvitta has received a heavy snowfall. Roads are covered with snow, vehicles are moving slowly. Please be careful if you have to travel. Please comment on what the weather is like in your city.” Text superimposed on the video reads, “Today’s fresh update from Jhapa’s Kakarvitta. The situation of Kakarvitta today.”

The video posted on January 6 has garnered 4217 likes, 1133 users have shared it and 499 people have commented until the last count.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.

Fact Check/ Verification

To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker searched for news reports about snowfall in Kakarvitta of Jhapa, a Terai district in Easter Nepal. However, we didn’t find any credible reports about snowfall in Kakarvitta.

We then checked the weather reports on the website of the department of hydrology and meteorology and meteorological forecasting division didn’t find any reports of snowfall in Nepal’s Jhapa district. The weekly forecast from January 2 to January had no prediction about snowfall in the Terai region of Nepal.

Notably, Nepal’s Terai region has typically no history of snowfall. The climate in the Terai is tropical to subtropical, characterized by hot summers and mild winters.

Further, we checked a key-frame from the viral video through AI-detection tool wasitai which indicated that the image carried in the viral video was generated by using AI.

We also checked the viral video through AI-detection tool Hivemodration and found that the video is clearly AI-generated.

Thus, our findings showed that the viral video is deep-fake.

Conclusion

No, there are no reports of snowfall in the Kakarvitta area of Jhapa district. The viral video is deep-fake.

Result: False

Sources
Department of Hydrology and Meteorology
 Hivemoderation