Hurricane Milton hit south of Tampa Bay in Siesta Key, Florida, USA, on October 9, 2024.
In this context, a video of a tornado has gone viral on social media with a caption suggesting that it shows Hurricane Milton hitting Florida.
The video is being shared with a caption, “Pray for Florida. Stay Safe and Alert. The power of nature. That's Milton Category 5. Pray for America.”
SouthCheck found that the claim was false. The viral video is computer-generated.
On doing a Google reverse image search, we found the same video uploaded by a YouTube channel on September 11, 2023, attributing the video to ‘tornado Daniel’ that occurred in Libya. This gave us a hint that the video is old.
The same video was used in a compilation by the YouTube channel of Forbes Middle East, uploaded on September 11, 2023. The description linked the video to ‘a powerful hurricane, named Daniel, that struck several regions and cities in northern and eastern Libya, bringing heavy rains that resulted in extensive flooding across the country.’
However, in the comments, many claimed the video was edited. Taking this hint, we searched with appropriate keywords to find the same video uploaded as YouTube Shorts on September 4, 2023. The channel had many similar videos depicting active tornadoes and hurricanes. However, the About Us section stated that most of the videos on the channel are computer-generated imagery. The viral video has also been created in the same manner.
We also found the original footage used to create the viral CGI video. The original footage is of Hurricane Mathew in Florida, United States in 2016. We found a YouTube video of the footage uploaded on October 9, 2016, with the caption, “Hurricane Matthew - Melbourne & Jacksonville, FL.”
Shutterstock also shared the video with the caption, “Hurricane Damage in Coastal Town.”
Comparing the original footage to the viral video, we traced the location of the viral video to South Beach Plaza Mall in Jacksonville using Google Maps. We compared a screenshot of the viral video with the image in Google Maps and found them to be the same. Both contain the same billboard in front of the building and the same tall building in the back.
Hence, we can ascertain that the viral video is computer-generated.