Record-breaking Cyclone Freddy made its second landfall in Mozambique on Saturday night, dumping heavy rains on the southern African country and making it hard to get around and talk on the phone.
The French weather service Météo-France warned of “destructive and devastating” winds, “dangerous seas,” and “heavy rains.” “that could cause rocks to fall. It said that Freddy will move farther inland over the weekend, bringing heavy rain to Mozambique and southern Malawi. It may also rain in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Freddy has hit the country twice now. The first time was late last month, when the cyclone hit land.
Meteo-France also said that they were worried that Freddy would not weaken over land in the next week and would likely go back out to sea. The agency said that when Freddy hit land, the highest wind speeds at sea were 155 kilometers per hour (about 100 miles per hour), and the average sea gusts were 220 kilometers per hour (about 140 miles per hour).
Freddy was on track to hit the country on Friday night, but he stopped moving over the Mozambique channel. Mozambique’s National Institute of Meteorology said that the cyclone got worse on Saturday and got stronger as it moved toward land.
Salomao Bandeira, a scientist at Mozambique’s Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, said, “Almost all of the rivers don’t have dams to stop flooding.” The second blow from the cyclone is raining on a large, low-lying area full of rivers. Bandeira said that flooding in the country earlier this year hit areas where dams on major rivers let people have some control. This made people worry that this hit could cause even more damage.
Mozambique and Malawi, which have been dealing with cholera and other diseases that spread through water, are already worried about the rain that is expected. The disaster alert system run by the U.N. and the EU has already sent out a red alert, saying that about 2.3 million people will be affected. The disaster institute in Mozambique has moved thousands of people into shelters in case of a storm.
Bandeira said that being ready ahead of time has helped save more lives in Mozambique.
In a statement released on Saturday, the Malawi Red Cross said it had activated its early response teams in southern Malawi to get ready for the cyclone.
The U.N. weather agency set up a committee earlier this week to figure out if Freddy has broken the record for the longest-lasting tropical cyclone in recorded history. Freddy has been moving through the southern Indian Ocean for more than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles).
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that Freddy has already broken the record for the second-highest accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE, which is a measurement of a cyclone’s energy over time.
Carl Schreck of NOAA said that Freddy is the third storm on record to last longer than 22 days. The other two were Hurricane John in 1994 and a hurricane in the Atlantic that had no name in 1899. La Nina and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole, which is a change in temperature over the ocean, are natural weather events “”This kind of event may have been more likely because of changes in ocean temperatures and the way the air moves,” Schreck said.
Any storm that can stay so strong for so long and hit two different places on land is important in terms of how it affects people and in terms of science “Kristen Corbosiero, who teaches at the University of Albany in the field of atmospheric and environmental sciences, said this.
Corbosiero said, “Intense storms usually go through a series of eyewall replacement cycles and intensity changes.” This is when the cyclone starts to form a new eye. “Freddy, on the other hand, didn’t have these cycles for most of its life. “Trying to figure out why will make a good topic for a research paper.”
