A Florida reporter got viewers talking on Wednesday (September 28) with the unorthodox equipment she used to report on Hurricane Ian.
NBC2's Kyla Galer was reporting on the storm from a parking lot in Fort Myers, Florida, when her microphone flashed into view of the camera.
Eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the microphone was sheathed in what appeared to be a protective rubber casing. It didn't take long for them to realize that the microphone was, in fact, wearing a condom.
Unsurprisingly, people were quick to joke about the bizarre protective equipment.
"NBC 2 practicing safe microphone reporting during hurricane Ian," one viewer joked on Twitter.
"@NBCNewsNow really got this woman out here holding a mic wrapped in a condom up to her face," added another.
"Putting a condom on the microphone is not what her producer meant by: 'Stay safe out there'," a third tweeted.
However, Galer leaped to the defense of her whacky reporting practice on her Instagram story.
"A lot of people are asking what is on my microphone," she said, holding out the condom-covered mic.
"It is what you think it is. It’s a condom. It helps protect the gear. You can’t get these mics wet. There’s a lot of wind and a lot of rain, so we gotta do what we gotta do and that is put a condom on the microphone," she explained.
Meanwhile, Galer wasn't the only person to defend putting condoms on microphones during hurricane season. Her colleague at ABC7, Jeff Butera, shared his own snap of Galer's mic and joked: "WE PRACTICE SAFE HURRICANE REPORTING."
"Yes, it's a condom," he continued, adding that there is "nothing better to waterproof a microphone."
Hurricane Ian has been wreaking havoc along the Florida coast since it made landfall on Wednesday afternoon (September 28).
The storm peaked at a category four system yesterday when it saw deadly 150mph winds batter the area surrounding Fort Myers and over two million homes lose electricity.
Since then, the hurricane’s journey inland has seen it lose power and be downgraded to a category one storm. Northern Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina are among the areas projected to be hit next. Per BBC News, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has warned people in the storm’s path to prepare for "a nasty, nasty" couple of days.