Hurricane Milton: Fact-checking videos claiming to show scenes from the storm

Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida as a Category 3 storm on Oct. 9, bringing powerful winds, heavy rain and tornadoes to the Gulf Coast, including communities already battered by deadly Hurricane Helene. 

Numerous social media posts claim to show shocking storm videos. 

One video, shared multiple times on X and YouTube, shows a compilation of destructive tornadoes. The text over the video states it shows clips taken on Oct. 9. The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, also shared an image from the video on its website about Hurricane Milton.

Another compilation video with over two million views on TikTok shows dramatic clouds and dark skies allegedly from Milton. VERIFY readers, including Tasha, texted and asked if this video is really from Hurricane Milton.

QUESTION #1

Was this video depicting various tornadoes taken during Hurricane Milton?

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

No, this video doesn’t show various tornadoes taken during Hurricane Milton. The video is a compilation of several videos from different storms that happened before Milton, as well as computer generated video. 

WHAT WE FOUND

This video doesn’t show clips from Hurricane Milton.  

Using InVid, a video forensics tool, VERIFY analyzed the video and conducted a reverse image search of each frame of the video. VERIFY compared the clips to the original ones found online and confirmed none are from Milton. Here are a few examples: 

The first eight seconds of the video shows a tornado seemingly forming over a field. We traced this clip to a YouTube video posted on June 15, 2024. It’s not a real tornado at all; it’s computer generated (CGI) and was posted by a channel that exclusively posts CGI weather videos. 

The second clip shows a tornado in Andover, Kansas, which was posted on May 5, 2022 by KAKE News, a TV station in Wichita, Kansas. The third was filmed during severe storms in western New York and shared by VERIFY partner station WGRZ on July 10, 2024. The fourth clip was taken during a tornado in Ellabell, Georgia, and published to YouTube by First Coast News, a VERIFY partner station in Jacksonville, Florida, on April 5, 2022. 

At the 30-second mark, a clip of first responders seeing a carport fly through the air also happened before Hurricane Milton. That clip was posted to TikTok on Aug. 17, 2023; VERIFY was unable to confirm the context or conditions under which this clip was filmed. The final clip in the compilation was shared by various news outlets in August 2023 following Hurricane Idalia. 

QUESTION #2

Does this compilation video show storm clips taken before Hurricane Milton made landfall, as the text on the video claims?

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

No, this video doesn’t show storm clips taken before Hurricane Milton made landfall. The video is made up of several clips that predate Milton and the audio is digitally altered.

WHAT WE FOUND

Similar to the first video in this fact-check, this video is made up of several video clips edited together to create the illusion this video was taken during Hurricane Milton. 

We traced multiple clips in this video to ones taken before October 2024. We confirmed they were the same by comparing the features in each video clip. 

The first portion of the video, showing a dark storm over a lifeguard shack can be traced to a video posted on July 5, 2021 by TikTok account @chloeandcalliegoldenlife. According to the caption, it was taken before Hurricane Elsa, the fifth storm of the 2021 hurricane season. The video was flipped, but the same lifeguard building and deck appear in both the viral video and the original.

The second clip shows what appears to be a tsunami-like wave of clouds behind a group of houses, but it’s actually a shelf cloud sweeping over a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was posted to Facebook by The Weather Channel on June 20, 2022.

At the 17-mark of the video, a cloud formation can be seen over a neighborhood. This video was taken in Jacksonville, Florida, and published to YouTube by VERIFY partner station First Coast News on Feb. 6, 2024. 

VERIFY could not confirm the origin of the clip showing the storm forming over a road lined with white powerlines. But this photo posted to Instagram on July 4 features the same clouds, powerline formation and vehicles seen in the video.