Associated Press

A large rotating cloud structure called a mesocyclone was photographed June 10 in Orchard, Iowa, by Lori Mehmen from outside her front door. A tornado briefly touched the ground causing minor damage to trees and crops. This photo was circulated on some e-mails as the Little Sioux Scout Camp tornado that occurred the following day.

Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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When I get an e-mail that has been mass-forwarded, and it contains photos that are claimed to be of a certain extreme weather event at some faraway location, I have a consistent and simple reaction.

I don't believe it.

With few exceptions, such photos are computer-derived fakes, or real photos misidentified, sometimes even stolen. Go to Snopes.com, and you'll find many examples of these urban legends.

Unfortunately, weather photo and video fakery issues are bleeding into mainstream news sources.

Earlier this month, The Associated Press and three major television networks retracted tornado video, purported to be from Valentine, Neb., on July 5, that had been purchased from a storm chaser.

Other storm chasers, collaborating on an Internet bulletin board, agreed that the video was doctored footage from a tornado in Kansas four years earlier; one of them contacted AP. The AP conducted an investigation with its photo editor and another storm chaser, concluding it was indeed the 2004 Kansas tornado.

Understandably, some news organizations are now gun-shy about accepting storm video from freelancers.

I'm extremely cautious myself, even in considering photos for publication from wire services.

Last month, in my role as a copy editor, overseeing The Roanoke Times' night desk on that particular night, I made a decision along with the wire editor John Gibbons to withhold a spectacular storm photo from Iowa after I learned via the Internet that some storm chasers were questioning its veracity.

As it turns out, the photo was real, and its location and date were correctly identified by The Associated Press. But the photo was also being passed around on e-mail as the tornado that killed four Boy Scouts at the Little Sioux Scout Camp in Iowa on June 11.

In fact, the photo, taken by a resident of Orchard, Iowa, from her home on June 10, is of a large mesocyclone, or rotating segment of a thunderstorm. It produced a brief tornado that injured no one and damaged no structures. But we didn't want to take any chance on publishing a fake or incorrectly identified photo.

I'm publishing it with Weather Journal today. But if you get an e-mail with this photo, claiming it is of the Little Sioux Scout Camp tornado, please let the sender know that the e-mail is in error.

Quality storm images are a valuable asset, not just for the media, but for science.

A viewer-shot video shown by WDBJ (Channel 7) on June 3 was critical in determining that a tornado touched down in Roanoke. National Weather Service meteorologists referred to the video, showing an intermittent but obviously rotating rope-like funnel, even as they conducted the storm damage survey the following day.

I don't sell weather photos and videos. I print some in The Roanoke Times and post many more on my roanoke.com blog, but my paycheck doesn't change no matter how many I post.

Meteorology instructor Dave Carroll and I do not sell images from our May storm chase trips for students but will give them to National Weather Service offices and various media outlets.

The student chasers, who often have far better equipment and skills than I do, are free to do what they want with their images, but none has ever declined my requests to publish them without pay in The Roanoke Times or on roanoke.com.

I'm not criticizing those who do sell storm video or photos. It's a substantial part of some people's livelihood, and as a weather geek, it is a joy to see the work of professionals close to powerful storms.

But I don't mind a bit that the photos from my closest tornado encounter this year, on May 22 near WaKeeney, Kan., are grainy and a bit out of focus. It was dusk under a dark cloud using an average digital camera, so I couldn't expect much more.

They are worthless to fake, copy or sell, but priceless to me.