This Facebook post with a video claiming to show the first snowfall in Garowe, the administrative capital of Somalia’s Puntland regional state, is SATIRICAL.
The clip shared on 13 June 2025 shows a reporter interviewing a senior citizen about the snow.
The Somali text accompanying the post reads, “The first snow is falling in Garowe this morning.”
A similar video, with text claiming it was “rainy with snowfall in Garowe today”, was posted on TikTok.
The claim emerged after rainfall was reported across much of Puntland, including Garowe, in May and June 2025. A report from Puntland’s Water and Land Resources Center on 11 May 2025 confirmed rain in most areas.
Additionally, the country’s Federal Ministry of Environment and Climate Change released the general weather forecast for summer (June–September) 2025, which indicated heavy rains in parts of the country.
But is the video authentic?
The video in question starts with the reporter stating that today is a historic day. The reporter then points the microphone — bearing a G TV Garowe logo — toward an elderly individual with snow on his shoulder and head. The individual says, “We are standing in Garowe, where the first snow has fallen,” after which the reporter laughs.
PesaCheck took a screenshot of the video and ran it through the Google Lens tool, which revealed no credible results.
Further review of the official Facebook pages of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management (Puntland), Puntland’s Information Management Center for Water and Land Resources (IMC), and the Federal Ministry of Environment and Climate Change did not show any snow alerts or related updates.
A keyword search using a seven-day Google timeframe and terms such as “Snowing in Garowe” also found no credible sources supporting the claim. Instead, we found this Facebook post stating, “It was not snowing in Garowe; it was raining.”
A closer examination of the video reveals several inconsistencies that suggest it may have been generated using artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, the people in the background appear blurred, and the hands of the children playing are oddly deformed in motion. Snow is visible on the roadside but not on the road itself. Additionally, at the start of the video, the bus behind the reporter and interviewee appears to move forward but remains stationary, and by the end of the video, it seems to move in reverse.
Further analysis of the video using DeepFake-O-Meter revealed that it is 95 per cent likely to be AI-generated. This suggests strong manipulation, consistent with the visual inconsistencies and unnatural interactions observed in the clip.
Somalia’s Ministry of Ports and Marine Transport officially announced on 26 May 2025 the start of the annual monsoon season, warning of strong winds and dangerous sea conditions across the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.
PesaCheck has reviewed a Facebook post with a video purporting to show the first snowfall in Garowe, the administrative capital of Somalia’s Puntland regional state, and finds it to be SATIRICAL.
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This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Hassan Istiila and edited by PesaCheck Senior Copy Editor Mary Mutisya and Chief Copy Editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
