A video in which bolts of lightning strike the ground from storm clouds is from Hurricane Milton.
This clip isn’t of Hurricane Milton. It was shared on social media in September, a month before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida on 9 October.
A video clip in which multiple lightning strikes emerge from rolling storm clouds has been shared with the false claim it shows Hurricane Milton.
While Hurricane Milton did feature frequent lightning flashes, this video is not connected with that storm, which killed 32 people in the US.
The same video was shared on TikTok on 10 September with the caption: “thunder speed x5”.
But Hurricane Milton did not make landfall until October 9, when it struck Florida as a Category 3 hurricane.
Additionally, while we cannot say for certain, there are clues that the video may have been created or modified using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In the clip it appears that the lightning is coming as a slow continuous wave, and striking behind the horizon rather than actually hitting the ground.
Lightning strikes actually travel at 270,000 mph, so it is almost impossible that the bolts of lightning would be moving at the same speed as the clouds, as they appear to do in the video.
The same account that shared it on TikTok has also posted a number of other videos which are claimed to show weather events that appear to have been created with AI.
We have fact checked a number of other miscaptioned or likely AI-generated videos being shared alongside false claims they are of or related to Hurricane Milton.
Before sharing content online, it’s important to consider whether what you see is accurate and really depicts what it claims to. Our guides to spotting misleading images, videos and AI-generated content can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video has been online since before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida, and cannot show the storm it claims to.
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