Space City talks TikTok

Space City talks TikTokApparently TikTok is convinced a hurricane will hit Houston this weekend. Eric Berger · Wednesday, July 16, 2025 7:07 AMIn brief: In today's post we take a quick temperature check on TikTok, which seems hot and bothered about the possibility of a hurricane hitting Houston.The TikTok hurricane
On Tuesday evening one of my daughters said "everyone" on TikTok is talking about a hurricane coming to Houston this weekend. At first, I thought it must be a few pot-stirrers, because nothing could be further from the truth. Why? Because:a) There is no hurricaneb) A tropical system that probably won't develop much is probably not coming to Texasc) There is no credible basis on which to make such a forecast right now, like noneSo we sat down and she showed me some of the videos. (Full disclosure, I just turned 52 years old, and I have only dabbled on TikTok. It's just not my thing. If it's yours, that is totally fine. I am not shaming anyone who likes TikTok or creates content there). I was BLOWN AWAY. The amount of misinformation is staggering, and these videos are being watched 100,000s of thousands of times, with this huge influential reach. It was to the point where my daughter was seriously concerned about the possibility of a hurricane coming to Houston, and asked me what we should do about it.I have no desire to try and take on the Chinese government or ByteDance and its algorithm. I realize that misinformation is rampant across social media, not just TikTok, and that people are knowingly and unknowingly spreading it for various reasons. But it frustrates me because this kind of content spreads anxiety, which for some people is crippling; and the inevitable false alarms will only sow doubt and uncertainty when the time comes to take real forecasts seriously.So with this post I just wanted to reiterate that Space City Weather will never play these games. We are not chasing clout. We aspire, above all things, to be boring and have boring weather to write about. We also acknowledge that we are far from perfect. We will make mistakes in our effort to predict the future, but they are honest mistakes and believe me, Matt and I agonize over them. In short, we are always going to try and bring you the truth about the weather as we see it. In 2025, that mission seems to be more vital than ever. So we fight on. We will do our utmost. I fear it will not be enough.