Does an authentic animation show Hurricane Leslie's projected path through Florida with tens of thousands of deaths, as a post on X suggested? No, that's not true: The clip was taken from a hurricane simulation game called Hurricane Outbreak. It does not represent Hurricane Leslie or its path. As of October 16, 2024, Hurricane Leslie had been downgraded from a hurricane and was no longer being tracked by the National Hurricane Center.
The claim was made with a video shared to X on October 13, 2024 (archived here). The caption read:
The current projected path for Hurricane Leslie.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken Wed Oct 16 19:46:08 2025 UTC)
In the video's lower right-hand corner, the count of "deaths" has reached more than 300,000, while the count of "damage" has reached more than 80,000.
The TikTok handle "hurricane_outbreak" is also at the lower right of the video. That's a profile (archived here) for the hurricane simulator game Hurricane Outbreak (archived here), which allows users to create storm systems.
The game is described on the Apple App Store (archived here) as:
Grow your hurricane by navigating warm waters, acquire skills and abilities. Cause destruction and death in cities along the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and United States Eastern Sea Board regions. Features thousands of simulated cities, 22 unique upgrades and realistic hurricane behavior that will make every play through different. How much destruction can you cause?
The video shared in the post on X was published on TikTok on October 12, 2024 (archived here). There was no mention of Hurricane Leslie in the original posting, which is shown in the screenshot below:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken Wed Oct 16 01:08:08 2024 UTC)
Designated as a tropical storm on October 2, 2024, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) classified the system into a hurricane on October 5, 2024, according to the agency's storm description (archived here). As of October 12, 2024, Leslie was downgraded. As of the last update, NHC was no longer tracking Leslie and noted (top of NHC page) that it was 1,900 miles from the U.S. East Coast. The last update (archived here) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was shared on October 13, 2024, and showed Leslie's path moving further east over the Atlantic Ocean and away from North America.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about hurricanes can be read here.
