Does a National Hurricane Center tracking map show a new storm heading for Florida immediately after Hurricane Milton hit in early October 2024? No, that's not true: The Center's "Atlantic Tropical Cyclones and Disturbances" map shows no storm setting its sights on the Sunshine State. Instead, the image on social media is an old map from November 2022.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on October 8, 2024. The video's caption said:
Can we get a break😭#florida #hurricaneseason #floridalife #floridaman
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Oct 11 14:59:20 2024 UTC)
Besides the map, which provides few details, the social media post offers no evidence to support its claim that another storm is bearing down on Florida in the aftermath of Milton. The Category 3 storm made landfall on the evening of October 9, 2024, near Siesta Key on Florida's west-central coast.
National Hurricane Center
As of October 11, 2024, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) website showed no tropical threats to Florida. The only significant activity in the North Atlantic at that time was Tropical Storm Leslie, located approximately 2,500 miles east of Miami and moving away from the United States. The two NHC maps appear below:
(Source: National Hurricane Center screenshots taken on Fri Oct 11 2024 UTC)
Google search
The map in the social media post, which claims to show an imminent threat to Florida, is actually from nearly two years earlier. Through a reverse image search with Google Lens, Lead Stories found the map in stories about Subtropical Storm Nicole, including one in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (archived here). Any details about Nicole were cropped from the image included in the TikTok video. The full map from November 7, 2022, appears below:
(Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune screenshot taken on Fri Oct 11 16:48:53 2024 UTC)
Nicole eventually strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane, making landfall near Vero Beach, Florida, on November 10, 2022.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Hurricane Milton are here.
