Tropical storm Hilary dampens Los Angeles picket lines, causing snark attacks with phony theme park footage

Los Angeles is suffering from rains and flooding from its first tropical storm in 84 years, Hilary, which Deadline is reporting has led the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA unions to shut down their planned picket lines for Monday, August 21.

This is the first time Los Angeles weather has paused picketing activity; as reported in July, record heat in New York City caused the unions to tell their members to suspend their demonstrations temporarily over extreme heat.

While Los Angelinos deal with the rare storm, it apparently hasn’t dampened their senses of humor — in fact, it led to a snark attack centering on a Universal Studios Hollywood theme park attraction.

One user posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, what seemed to be video of water gushing onto a subway platform and noted, “The LA Metro Station on Wilshire/Vermont is flooding from the storm.” The poster later laughed that he was actually asked by journalists if they could use his “footage.”

The video garnered enough attention online to merit a debunking from LA Metro, which runs the subway system there.

“This is a ride at Universal Studios. Duh,” the official account noted. In fact, it was indeed from the park’s Earthquake! ride, which sees a subway flooded in real time, mimicking a movie special effect.

One poster recognized the footage as fake, too, joking, “Show them the one of the giant gorilla,” referencing the park’s King Kong attraction.

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