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Set to the wail of sirens, a viral video on social media claims to show scenes of Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. Text on a said simply, "Florida Hurricane Helene."
Plenty of legitimate footage exists of the hurricane, which made landfall near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4 storm and caused extensive wind and flood damage across the Southeast. But this video is not authentic. Some of its clips are from previous storms in different states and different years. Some were altered with artificial intelligence or existed online before Hurricane Helene formed.
READ MORE: How Helene became the near-perfect storm to bring widespread destruction across the South
The Facebook video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our , which owns Facebook, Threads and Instagram.)
We used to find where some of these clips started online. We found other clips circulating online several months before Helene made landfall.
- The Facebook video’s opening clip is false on two different points, The scene shows at a Florida mall as Hurricane Matthew tore through in 2016. And the twister at the back of the mall is computer-generated. at the European Broadcasting Union the video after social media users passed it off as a hurricane in Tanzania.
- We couldn’t find the location of the second clip showing debris flying as cars passed, but we found another posted in October 2023.
- The third clip featuring a car being tossed by strong winds is from a in Taiwan.
- The fourth clip is from a that ripped through Dortches, North Carolina, and that AccuWeather shared then.
- We found a record of the fifth clip showing debris flying across an apartment complex being before Helene.
- We saw the in a November 2022 Instagram post.
- We found the seventh video on , posted 10 days before Helene crashed into Florida.
- The eighth clip featuring palm trees as they struggle against powerful winds was shared online in and featured in a , a digital news platform.
- We found the ninth clip, showing debris from trees quickly filling a street, on Sept.18, a week before Hurricane Helene.
- We rate the claim that this video shows scenes of Hurricane Helene False.
Our Sources
- Facebook post (), Sept. 27, 2024
- National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, , Sept. 27, 2024
- European Broadcasting Union, YouTube, , Oct. 8, 2016
- The Quint, , Apr. 18, 2024
- X post, , July 20, 2023
- Komo News, , Aug. 10, 2015
- Logically Facts, , March 18, 2024
- , Sept. 17, 2024
- , Oct. 3, 2023, Sept. 18, 2024
- Instagram post, (), Nov. 25, 2023
- Instagram post, (), Nov. 7, 2022
