Cyclone Freddy hit Mozambique on Friday in a rare second strike

Still recovering from the effects of the first blow, the southwestern African country of Mozambique is bracing for a rare second hit by the long-running Tropical Cyclone Freddy on Friday night, a regional weather center said. tuEsday

By means ofWANJOHI KABUKURU Associated Press

MOMBASA, Kenya — Still recovering from the effects of the first blow, the southwest African country of Mozambique is bracing for a rare second hit by long-running Tropical Cyclone Freddy on Friday night, a regional weather center said. which is Tuesday.

The United Nations monitoring station on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean warned that Freddy “will gradually intensify to the stage of a tropical storm or even a strong tropical storm” in the Mozambique Channel before making landfall. all night Friday through Saturday.

Freddy is expected to intensify on Thursday as it approaches the coast of Mozambique, with current sea winds averaging 110 kilometers (about 70 miles) per hour, gusts of 155 kilometers (about 100 miles) per hour, and barreling in a northeasterly direction. It is expected to make landfall in Zambezia’s second most populous province.

Its variability has baffled meteorologists because of its frequent changes in direction and many record-breaking achievements. Freddy has intensified four separate times, the first for a tropical storm in the southern hemisphere. It also currently holds the world record for what is called “accumulated cyclone energy,” a metric for measuring the strength of a storm over time.

Freddy hammered eastern Madagascar last month before moving off track and battering Mozambique, killing 21 people in both countries. The deluge affected an estimated 213,000 people and destroyed more than 28,000 homes in the Mozambican capital of Maputo and neighboring provinces, according to Mozambique’s National Institute for Disaster Risk Management.

It then seemed to disappear before reappearing, skirting the Mozambique Channel. It was originally destined for Madagascar for the second time but changed its way back to mainland Africa.

The French weather agency Meteo-France said in a bulletin on Tuesday that as Freddy gathered more speed, it also posed a serious risk to the weather in Toliara, the capital of the Atsimo-Andrefana region of Madagascar, with strong winds and the sea remains “dangerous due to cyclonic swell. .” Freddy is currently soaking in southern Madagascar as it flies over the channel.

The UN weather agency said Freddy was on course to become the longest-lived tropical cyclone in history after traversing the entire Indian Ocean for a month.

November to April is classified as hurricane season in the southwest Indian Ocean and climate scientists say climate change is making storms stronger, making them longer, wetter and more frequent.

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