Cyclone Freddy Kills 8 In Madagascar, Set To Hit Mozambique A Second Time
Cyclone Freddy killed eight people in Madagascar and destroyed more than 1 000 homes when it hit the Indian Ocean island for the second time on Monday.
The storm killed 21 people and displaced thousands in Mozambique and Madagascar during its first journey westward in late February.
Cyclone Freddy is expected to make landfall again in Mozambique later this week.
According to BBC, the tropical cyclone is on track to become the longest-lasting storm on record and it continues to gain strength.
Freddy has already broken records for the strength it has accumulated and the 8 000km path it travelled across the Indian Ocean.
It already holds the record for the highest accumulated cyclone energy in the southern hemisphere.
Cyclone Freddy began its journey as a tropical storm on 6 February south of Indonesia and rapidly intensified to Category 1 intensity the following day.
By 11 February, Cyclone Freddy rapidly intensified again to Category 3.
Eight days later, as a Category 5 storm, Freddy became the longest-lasting, most intense Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone as measured by the ACE index – in records dating to 1980.
ACE is an abbreviation for accumulated cyclone energy, and is a metric used by scientists to measure the duration and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes around the world.
The higher the ACE, the longer-lasting and more intense the tropical cyclone.
Fifteen days after it first became a tropical storm, Freddy became only the second southern Indian Ocean tropical cyclone in NOAA’s best track database to have reached at least Category 1 intensity and track from near Indonesia all the way to a Madagascar landfall.
Cyclone Eline/Leon in February 2000 was the only other storm to reach such an intensity as well as last and track that long.
Cyclone Freddy made landfall in southern Mozambique as a tropical storm on 24 February but quickly lost much of its intensity the following day.
By the time it entered southern Zimbabwe, Freddy’s remnant had downgraded to a low-pressure zone.
Instead of its remnant low dissipating over southern Africa, it made a U-turn and tracked eastward into the Mozambique Channel and became a tropical storm again last Friday.
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