No, this CNN report does not show the year’s “strongest storm” will hit the Philippines

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on September 7, 2018 at 17:32
  • 1 min read
Multiple Facebook posts claim that a CNN report is warning the year’s “strongest storm” will hit the Philippines. The video is from a 2014 CNN report about a tropical storm, and at the time the misleading posts began circulating on Facebook in early September 2018 there was no major storm warning for the Philippines.

The posts such as this one and this one claim to show a CNN report on the year’s “strongest storm” hitting the Philippines.

Image
Snapshot of misleading post

One of the posts has a status which, when translated to English, says: “Our powerful God, we hope that the previous storm will not happen again. Prepare Philippines! Be watchful! A typhoon same as the Yolanda is about to land in the Philippines, specifically in our place again. Please see the video. TAKE CARE EVERYONE. PLEASE SHARE THIS”.

Yolanda (international Haiyan) was then the strongest storm ever recorded to have made landfall when it smashed into the eastern Philippines in 2013. It destroyed entire towns and killed thousands of people.

Watching the CNN report embedded in the false Facebook posts shows that the reporters are talking about tropical storm Hagupit (local name Ruby), another deadly storm that struck the Philippines in 2014.

Here is the link to the original CNN report. 

On September 7, when at least two of the posts went onto Facebook, there was no major storm warning for the Philippines, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, the state weather forecaster.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

Contact us