Map Showing Irma on Path to Houston Is Fake

Hurricane Irma is a massive storm, but not everyone on the Internet is an expert on such topics. [...]

By Charlie Ridgely

Hurricane Irma is a massive storm, but not everyone on the Internet is an expert on such topics. With that in mind, you need to be careful when news about the storm starts popping across social media feeds.

Recently, a post has been going around about the possibility of Irma changing its path to run straight into Houston. Fortunately, this simply isn't true.

A Facebook user posted a map of Hurricane Irma days before it made landfall in the Caribbean. The map showed the storm pushing through the Gulf of Mexico and up into Texas, doubling the damage that Hurricane Harvey caused.

The post said that the storm was being predicted to hit Houston and even included the official banner and logo from the National Hurricane Center. In just over a day on Facebook, the post had been shared more than 36,000 times.

PolitiFact.com pointed out that this report was fake, and the National Weather Service helped back that up by debunking the report on Twitter.

The service tweeted out the real trajectory of the storm, accompanied by a warning that fake maps of Irma were floating around.

If you want to keep up with Hurricane Irma, follow accounts like The National Weather Service and The Weather Channel for the most accurate information.

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