Hurricane Florence: False image claims that storm is a real-life Sharknado

You are more than likely aware of just how rampant fake news is at the moment and how easily false information can be spread on social media.

With Hurricane Florence about to hit both North and South Carolina on the United States east coast, there are likely to be numerous stories and videos of the storm online over the next few days.

You might hear of reports of dramatic rescues, miraculous stories of survival or devastating floods.

Some of those may or may not be true but we can 100 per cent confirm for you now that this storm is not a Sharknado!

Although a storm of this magnitude obviously contains lots of risks and dangers, the chances of getting eaten by a flying shark are slim to none.

However, a fake news graphic about Hurricane Florence containing sharks has gone viral on Twitter and people seem pretty concerned.

In case you are wondering what on earth we are on about Sharknado is a cult TV-movie franchise where freak cyclones containing man-eating sharks cause havoc across America.

The series now has six films to its name as well as several spin-offs. The most recent release was The Last Sharknado: It's About Time which involved time-travel. As you can guess, this isn't exactly highbrow cinema.

This isn't the first time that shark rumours have spread on the internet during a storm.

During August 2017, when Houston, Texas was battered by Hurricane Harvey, an image of a shark swimming down a highway went viral but it was soon found to be a doctored photo taken from Africa Geographic.

HT AL

More: These images being shared of Hurricane Harvey are all fake