First-ever tornado photograph is likely fake but a new, real photo has emerged

For more than 100 years, one photograph has claimed to be the first ever taken of a tornado. Now, an earlier, more authentic image has emerged.

Legend has it that 140 years ago, the first-ever photograph of a tornado was taken in 1884. But is the photograph legitimate?

A photo taken in modern-day South Dakota in August 1884 claimed to be the record-holder, and for more than 100 years, this assertion went unchallenged. Although a local office of NOAA's National Weather Service still says it is "the earliest known photo," NOAA correctly called it "one of the first" in a recent story.

Photographer F.N. Robinson is credited with taking the photo near Howard, Dakota Territory (where modern South Dakota is), on Aug. 28, 1884.

Tornadoes were known as cyclones in early America and are still referred to as such in some overseas countries. The photo was promoted at the time as "the only photo of a cyclone."

Too good to be true?

Although tornadoes did occur on that day, this isn't the earliest photo of a tornado and likely isn't even real.

The multi-vortex tornadoes, shown here on either side of the main funnel, are too perfectly shaped. The clouds along the top of the image also don't look realistic.

Tornadoes don't develop out of what looks like a long, stable layer of stratus clouds -- those aren't even present in thunderstorms. Typically, a lowering wall cloud will produce a tornado below a more chaotic supercell thunderstorm, as shown in the photo below.

Tornado expert Thomas P. Grazulis first expressed the controversial opinion that Robinson's photo was doctored in his book, "Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991, a Chronology and Analysis of Events," published in 1993.

"This photo was probably touched up or combined with another photograph that had a more interesting cloud base," Grazulis wrote. "Early photographs were frequently altered to make them more saleable commercially."

In much the same way many people can't often tell the difference between nascent AI art and real weather photos today, people in the 1800s who had seen few photos, let alone images of tornadoes, wouldn't have known that photo was doctored.

Photo taken four months earlier in Kansas is the real deal

More recently, a second picture, taken several months prior to the F.N. Robinson photo, has emerged as the likely winner. It shows a tornado in Garnett, Kansas, on April 26, 1884. The clouds and tornado actually look like they do in modern tornado photos and videos.

According to a journal article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, this twister tore a 10-mile path through the Kansas countryside. As it spun, fruit farmer A.A. Adams quickly assembled his box camera and captured a single photo of the tornado. The twister damaged homes and barns and supposedly carried a man named David Metheney and his wagon through the air. He was injured but survived.

A.A. Adam's obituaries in newspapers in 1907 mentioned the photo, which he had made into souvenir cards and stereographs, making him a local celebrity.

Other fake photos of tornadoes have circulated under the guise of being the first, including ones in Oklahoma in 1896 and 1898. Like Robinson's photo, these don't pass muster when viewed by weather photographers and are, at the very least, composites, if not completely fake.

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