Amid a series of storms exploding snow and snowstorms from Washington state to Washington, DC, and as far south as Louisiana and Mississippi, social media posts show a picture of cars trapped in the snow along a highway with a vehicle in flames. Accompanied by the hashtag # snowpocolypse2021 and claiming that the incident took place on Interstate 64 near Milton, West Virginia, the image taken seven years ago in Raleigh, North Carolina, was incorrectly marked.
Recent posts sharing this image that makes this claim can be found here, here and here.
One post with nearly 800 shares (here) contains the caption: “Be safe out there, it’s 64 near the Milton exit # snowpocolypse2021.” This could be a reference to I-64, an American highway east and west between the St. Louis, Missouri area and Hampton Roads, Virginia (here). The ‘milton exit’ (sic) possibly refers to exit 28 near Milton, West Virginia (here).
Although the photo in question is authentic, it is not from 2021 and does not show I-64 near Milton, West Virginia. As reported here by Raleigh, the NBC subsidiary WRAL, North Carolina, the 2014 photo shows a car on fire as vehicles nearby struggle to climb a snow-covered hill in Glenwood Avenue ‘in downtown Raleigh.
A woman named Lindsay Webb allegedly took the picture with her iPhone while she was on the road for hours. WRAL reported at the time that Webb’s photo ‘spread rapidly on the internet and appeared on several websites, including CNN, The Huffington Post, Gawker, Slate and Reddit’ (here).
It then becomes a reminder while social media users in the Stay-Puft marshmallow man, John Goodman as Walter Sobchak in “The Big Lebowski”, Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort in “Harry Potter”, and a shirtless Russian president Vladimir horse row. (here).
VERDICT
Failure. This image of a car burning in the snow was taken in 2014 in North Carolina.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.