The video was posted by social media user @IndeedsTopOpp late Wednesday September 28 evening and has so far been viewed more than 11 million times on Twitter.

The brief video shows a large elephant seal shuffling down a street next to houses, while someone records the incident from a car.

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm and reached sustained winds of 150mph, before it weakened over land.

The impact of the hurricane has already been felt acutely, as it caused flooding, power outages and damage to infrastructure and homes.

But, as often happens during natural disasters in the digital age, it also brought a flood of misinformation and out-of-context content.

The Claim

The video, tweeted by @IndeedsTopOpp, was captioned to suggest the animal was swept into Florida: “son wtf going on in Florida??”

Many viewers took to tagging their friends, making jokes, offering condolences to the victims of the the hurricane while others questioned whether the incident really did happen in Florida.

Some social media users also claimed that they would not be surprised if the video was real due to the severity of the storm.

The Facts

The video is genuine, but mislabled: it is in fact from an incident that occurred in Puerto Cisnes, Chile in 2020.

A reverse image search of a still from the clip shows that it predates Hurricane Ian by two years.

The same video had also been shared on Twitter at the time by user Autentica995 on October 6 2020, and was reposted on Reddit the following month.

“With the support of residents of Puerto Cisnes, the Navy and the Carabineros, it was possible to bring back the elephant seal, which travelled more than 10 blocks,” the caption said according to a Google translation.

“Finally with tarps and more than 60 neighbors, it was sheltered and taken to its habitat.”

In addition to this, both local and global news publications reported on the strange incident, which took place on October 6, 2020, and provided other videos and vantage points of the elephant seal attempting to traverse the area.

A video posted on the Guardian’s YouTube channel also showed the rescue efforts by the locals and authorities.

Argentinian online newspaper InfoBae also covered the story and spoke to a woman who recorded some of the footage with her son.

“It moved very quickly. My son noticed it first and at first I was scared, but since they move slowly, I stayed calm and told him to record it,” passer-by Antonia told the publication, according to a Google translation.

The Ruling

False.

While it may have been made as a joke, the video posted by the Twitter user IndeedsTopOpp was not newly recorded footage of the chaos caused by Hurricane Ian in Florida.

Multiple outlets source the video to an incident that happened in Puerto Cisnes, Chile, in October 2020.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek