Florida isn’t going to be hit by a massive sandstorm seen in footage from the Suez Canal

FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2009 file photo, cargo ships sail through the Suez Canal, seen from a helicopter, near Ismailia, Egypt. A massive sandstorm seen in footage from the Suez Canal last month is not headed to Florida or any other U.S. states, despite claims otherwise on social media. Although dust from the Sahara Desert has reached Florida multiple times this summer, the sandstorm in the video has nothing to do with this common phenomenon. (AP Photo, File)

CLAIM: A video of ships being engulfed by an enormous sandstorm shows weather that is heading toward U.S. states including Florida and New York.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video shows a sandstorm in Egypt early last month as it blew over the Suez Canal. Although dust from the Sahara Desert has reached Florida multiple times this summer — a common occurrence known as the Saharan Air Layer — the sandstorm in the video has nothing to do with this phenomenon, meteorologists told The Associated Press.

THE FACTS: Amid reports that the Saharan Air Layer was expected to impact Florida in recent days, social media users misrepresented the striking footage out of the Middle East, claiming that the massive sandstorm was on its way to the U.S.

The video includes two separate clips. In one, a monolithic plume of sand encroaches on a cargo ship that appears miniscule in comparison. The second shows the sand engulfing the boat from which the video is being filmed, until hardly anything is visible.

“Sandstorm about to hit Florida,” reads a TikTok post that shared the footage. It had received approximately 1.1 million views as of Wednesday. The video was also shared with the false claim on Twitter and Facebook.

“The forecast of a sandstorm potentially hitting New York, Florida, and moving across the United States is a stark reminder of the interconnectedness of our environments,” reads one tweet.

But the video shows a sandstorm in Egypt early last month as it hit the Suez Canal, and users are falsely conflating it with news about dust from the Sahara Desert that regularly crosses the North Atlantic this time of year.

A Facebook user first posted a longer version of the footage on June 1 with the caption, “Sand Storm at Bitter Lake, Suez Egypt,” referring to the saltwater lake that is part of the canal.

The user did not immediately return a request for comment, but other social media posts support the accuracy of the caption.

The same account shared a photo posted by another Facebook user of a container ship seen in the video. The latter user has shared multiple photos from aboard an oil and chemical tanker named “Eva Usuki,” whose characteristics match the ship from which the video was filmed. For example, both have a large, central tan crane near a collection of blue barrels. The boat also flies under the flag of the Philippines, and people can be heard speaking in Tagalog in the background of the original footage.

The Eva Usuki was in the Suez Canal on June 1, according to ship tracking data.

Other news outlets reporting on the sandstorm also posted similar footage at the time, showing different ships being engulfed by the cloud.

Multiple meteorologists told the AP that this sandstorm did not and will not impact the U.S. And it has nothing to do with the Saharan Air Layer, a mass of extremely dry and dusty air that forms over the Sahara Desert and moves across the North Atlantic from late spring to early fall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The video definitely showed a sandstorm, which definitely has a clear leading edge of dust that is at the ground and extends upward from there,” said Stephen Mullens, an assistant instructional professor of meteorology at the University of Florida. “What is coming across the Atlantic Ocean is still sand and dust, but we’d definitely not call it a sandstorm at all.”

Bob Larson, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, concurred, explaining that the dust headed to Florida would be at a very high altitude, thousands of feet above the ground, and would just give the sky “an extra hazy appearance.”

Sandstorms that crop up in Egypt don’t travel as a massive plume all the way to the U.S. from the Middle East anyway, the two meteorologists said.

Mullens added that it would be rare for even the Saharan Air Layer to reach New York, as some of the posts claimed, as it’s a bit too far north. But the Saharan Air Layer is a common occurrence in Florida that ebbs and flows throughout the summer each year. Its effects are generally innocuous and not a potential health hazard, the experts said.

“It’s not like a one singular event like a thunderstorm that just suddenly comes in, it’s here and then it’s gone,” Larson explained. “It’s something that’s kind of prevalent from time to time, some days more than others, and some days it’s not really noticeable at all.”___This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.