Old storm clip misrepresented as powerful Typhoon Ragasa
- Published on September 26, 2025 at 05:42
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Damn, Super Typhoon Ragasa is 230 km/hour, that's really fast," says an Indonesian-language TikTok post on September 24, 2025.
The video of people clinging to a pillar as a powerful burst of wind blows onto a train station platform was viewed more than 23,000 times.
Similar posts linking the video to Typhoon Ragasa circulated across social media posts in various languages, including Chinese, English, Polish, Malay and Thai.
The storm, branded the year's most powerful yet by weather authorities in Hong Kong, also hit the Philippines, Taiwan and Macau before crashing through southern China with winds up to 145 kilometres per hour (90 miles per hour) (archived link).
It ripped down trees, destroyed fences and blasted signs off buildings in Guangdong province, home to tens of millions of people.
Ragasa's passage in Taiwan killed at least 14 and injured dozens more when a barrier lake burst in eastern Hualien county, according to officials.
In financial hub Hong Kong, the typhoon caused flooding, uprooted trees and grounded hundreds of passenger flights.
However, the circulating clip is old.
Reverse image searches on Google found screenshots from the video published in Taiwanese media reports about a strong storm that hit Shanwei railway station in Guangdong on April 27, 2024 (archived here and here).
The clip was also shared on Weibo on April 29, 2024 (archived link). A sign reading "Shanwei Railway Station" in both simplified Chinese and English can be seen at the beginning of the clip.
The video corresponds to a geotagged photo of the station on Google Maps (archived link).
The Chinese state-affiliated online news portal for Nanfang Daily published a report on September 23, 2025 debunking the claim the video was taken during Typhoon Ragasa (archived link).
The report states Shanwei authorities said the weather was stable at the station that day.
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