There's this image making the email rounds which is supposedly an oil tanker heading into Hurricane Isabel. I got it in email yesterday, and proceeded to email it out to some friends. It's a cool pic. The problem is that it's not Hurricane Isabel. It's not recent either. It's not even from the Atlantic. According to the National Weather Service it's Cyclone Graham, which hit the Pacific in 2002.
Thanks to Pete, who gave me the straight dope (and the above link) in a reply to my email, I was able to contact everyone's favorite urban legend authority Snopes, who has a "research in progress" page on the image.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/isabel.asp
Yup, the photo is not correct. Here is the story.
Yes, I know. That part at the bottom of the page that says "although at least one source identifies the first image as being a picture of Tropical Cyclone Graham"? I was the one that tipped them off to the NWS picture, which my sister in-law's husband Pete had originally told me about.
So yeah. The picture is a fake. Like I mentioned earlier.
Posted by wee at September 25, 2003 11:19 AM