Video shows Hurricane Ian, not Helene

"I'll never understand you idiots that live in Florida in the center of hurricane pathways…. This is from hurricane Helene right now, storm surge is like 15-20ft," says a September 25, 2024 X post with hundreds of interactions. 

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Screenshot from X taken September 27, 2024

Helene made landfall September 26 on the Florida Panhandle as a dangerous Category 4 hurricane, leaving a trail of death and destruction. The National Weather Service warned of "catastrophic and potentially life-threatening" flooding as the storm headed inland and weakened.

AFP and other news organizations captured dramatic images of the destruction.

(City of St. Pete Beach Facebook page / ESN)

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A car in a flooded street is seen after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Atlanta, Georgia on September 27, 2024 (AFP / Richard PIERRIN)

But the video shared on X is unrelated to Hurricane Helene.

A watermark on the clip says "Max Olson Chasing." Olson, a self-described "storm chaser," originally posted the segment September 29, 2022 on X (archived here).

"Absolutely heartbreaking footage captured by our surge probe of catastrophic storm surge washing away homes. I have never seen anything like this," Olson said in the caption, linking to a longer YouTube video (archived here).

Some X users shared the same clip in context while attempting to highlight the hazards of storm surges. The X user sharing the video out of context followed up a day later, saying: "Oh my bad it's from 2022 -- okay lol my point still stands hahah."

A reverse image search using keyframes from the video found the same footage in multiple 2022 news reports about Hurricane Ian, which killed dozens of people and was the third costliest US weather disaster.

AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about natural disasters here, here and here.