Widespread video of Florida lightning predates Hurricane Ian

This article is more than one year old.
Published on September 30, 2022 at 20:42
5 min read
By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA

Social media users are claiming a widely shared video of onlookers reacting to lightning was taken during Hurricane Ian in the US state of Florida. This is false; the clip has circulated online since at least August 2022 and is unrelated to the storm.

"When a hurricane hits Florida people do a party," says a September 28, 2022 tweet sharing the video.

The clip shows a group of people gathered with drinks on a high-rise building's rooftop when lightning strikes nearby.

"Something's on fire," one person says in the video.

Screenshot from Twitter taken September 29, 2022

The clip was reposted across Twitter, racking up more than 4.2 million views. It also spread on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms, where posts in English and other languages connected it to Hurricane Ian.

The powerful Category 4 storm made landfall near Cayo Costa, Florida on September 28, wreaking havoc across the state's southwest coast. Satellite imagery shows lightning around the eye of the hurricane.

But the video making the rounds online predates Hurricane Ian's landfall by at least a month.

The same footage was posted to TikTok on August 28, 2022. The platform's library of original sounds indicates the clip was the first to use the audio of someone yelling "something's on fire."

The video appears to have been filmed from the vantage point of the Sun Deck Restaurant at the Lani Kai Island Resort in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

AFP geolocated the footage by matching details in the clip -- including the resort and surrounding buildings -- to photos online and street-level and aerial visuals from Google Maps and Google Earth.

AFP reached out to the Lani Kai Island Resort for comment, but no response was forthcoming.