Videos show Florida amid Hurricane Helene? No, these are all old

What is being claimed? 

Multiple videos of flooding amid heavy rainfall and strong winds have been shared online with the claim that they show the effects of Hurricane Helene. Three separate videos were shared by social media users falsely linking to Hurricane Helene. Nearly 100 people have been killed as Helene left behind a trail of destruction across the southeastern U.S., including Florida, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Reuters reported on September 30.

The first video shows a red house half-submerged in water before being swept away in the floodwaters. The caption reads "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 Get outta here I ain't owning property in the midst of this nightmare."

A second video shows a building with a blue roof in a heavy storm. The video was shared on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption: "#BREAKING: Helene is ALREADY down to 942MB (millibars). Hurricane Katrina's minimum central pressure at landfall was 902MB (millibars). ** THIS WILL BE THE ONE OF THE LARGEST CATEGORY 5 HURRICANES to hit the U.S. if this continues to drop! [sic]"

A third video shows a white car parked in front of a building amid gusts of wind. It was shared on Facebook with the text: "Helene makes landfall and is moving at 24 miles per hour towards Tallahassee at a Category 4, possible 5 (Translated from French)." An archived version of this post can be found here.

Screenshots of the posts shared online. (Source: X/Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the videos are not recent, but from 2022, and show stormy weather caused by Hurricane Ian.

Here are the facts

Video 1

A watermark in the bottom left corner of one video reads "MAX OLSON CHASING," which led us to a YouTube channel with the same name dedicated to videos of various storms. Max Olson is a storm chaser and videographer from Oklahoma, U.S.

We found a longer version of the viral video (archived here) on the channel posted on September 30, 2022. 

A screenshot of the watermark on the viral video. (Source: X)

The video was captioned: "15ft Storm Surge Washes Away Homes in Ft. Myers Beach - Hurricane Ian." The segment of the video included in the viral posts is visible from 0:36 seconds. Olson also shared this snippet on his X account (archived here), stating that he captured footage of the storm surge and a house being washed away in September 2022. 

ABC News also uploaded the now-viral footage to YouTube (archived here) on September 30, 2022. The video was included in a broadcast in which the ABC News anchor spoke to Mayor Kevin Anderson about the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida. The now-viral video can be seen at the timestamp of 3:05 seconds.

Hurricane Ian hit Florida on September 28, 2022, as reported by WPLG Local 10.

Video 2

Through a reverse image search, we found the same video posted on Fox News weather specialist Mike Seidel's X account (archived here) on September 29, 2022. The caption reads, "We were in the eye wall of Cat. 4 #Hurricane #Ian for over 5 hours and the back side was the worst. I haven't experienced anything close to this in over 30 years." ABC News (archived here) also shared the time-lapse video of the water surge from the Marriott Sanibel in Fort Meyers. The building matches the one seen in the viral video.

Video 3

Through a reverse image search, we found the original video on the YouTube channel of meteorologist and American storm chaser Reed Timmer, uploaded on September 30, 2022 (archived here). The video was captioned: "INTENSE eye wall and blue sky eye of Hurricane Ian on Pine Island, Florida." We can see the same car and the building pillars in this video too. 

We found that the now-viral video was also uploaded as a separate video on October 3, 2022, (archived here) with the caption: "New THE MOST INTENSE eye wall and storm surge of Hurricane Ian in Pine Island, Florida."

Our research shows the videos going viral are not from the recent Hurricane Helene but show the effects of Hurricane Ian in 2022.

The verdict

Two-year-old visuals capturing the effects of Hurricane Ian in Florida have been misrepresented as Hurricane Helene lashing Florida in September 2024.