Compilation featuring 'red rain' was not filmed in France

Context

A compilation of clips described as showing "red rain" in France was posted on Facebook on October 12.

The video, captioned "Red rain in France," includes footage that shows streets flooded with bright red liquid and clips of a violent thunderstorm shot in a parking lot, and has been viewed over 1.8 million times. 

The video surfaced as France experienced heavy rain this month, as reported by the French news outlet Le Monde. 

However, the three videos included in the compilation were not filmed in France and pre-date the flooding.

What we found

The first clue that the first video in the compilation may not be from France is the Chinese signs visible across the street. 

The car license plates provide another clue to the video's origins. French license plates have black lettering against a white background with strips of blue on the left and right border. 

While the license plates in the video are blurry, they show white lettering against a blue background, which matches the license plates in China. 

A reverse image search reveals that the footage was posted on Chinese-language sites in June 2024. A machine translation of one article by Apollo News Network reported that heavy rain had caused flooding in parts of Hubei province, and social media users had posted video footage of red water, described as having been filmed near Hanzheng Clothing City. 

The reported explanation in the aforementioned article was that red dye from the garment factories had leaked into the water.

The clip included in the Facebook compilation is a mirror-flipped version of the earlier footage. An English version of the same story was posted on YouTube on July 1, 2024.

China has recorded rivers turning red from pollution since at least 2007, as reported by Reuters. 

In July 2014, The Washington Post reported that a river near Wenzhou in the Zhejiang province turned bright red, with ABC News reporting at the time that this was due to suspected illegal dumping.  

Meanwhile, a reverse image search shows the thunderstorm footage included in the compilation comes from two different clips. 

One short clip of a house being lit up by lightning is a mirror-flipped version of a video posted on August 24, 2024, by an X (formerly Twitter) account with a description saying it shows a thunderstorm in Jazan, Saudi Arabia. Logically Facts was unable to geolocate this clip.

The second clip of lightning above a strip mall parking lot has been circulating since at least August 2023, when it was posted to TikTok with a description saying it showed a storm in Omaha, U.S. 

However, the shopfront and parking lot in the video match a location in Montreal, Quebec, with the highrise buildings in the background edited out.

The footage shows other signs that it was edited. Notably, it includes a side-to-side continuous panning shot of the parking lot, which pans back to entirely different store signs.

The verdict 

A viral video on Facebook claims to show red rain flooding the streets of France and was shared as the country experienced heavy rain. However, the compilation includes footage that pre-dates the rainfall, including a clip cited in Chinese-language news articles about flooding in China following garment dye contaminating flood water after heavy rains.