Tropical storm Freddy has now claimed more than 400 victims in Malawi and Mozambique. The storm already raged over the area at the end of February, but came ashore again last weekend.
The tropical storm made landfall in southern Africa at the end of February. After the storm had subsided for a while, the area had to deal with the storm again last weekend.
At the end of February, the storm already claimed 27 fatalities in Mozambique and Madagascar. Another 53 people were killed in Mozambique last weekend. In Malawi, 326 people died from the storm.
The cyclone has now moved away, but it is still raining heavily in parts of Malawi. The country’s government fears more landslides and flooding in the area.
Mozambique also had to deal with a lot of rain. There has been more precipitation in recent weeks than normally falls in a year. Some hard-to-reach communities are therefore completely cut off from the outside world. The emergency services are trying to get to the affected areas by boat, among other things.
Freddy is a striking long-lasting storm
What is striking about storm Freddy is not only that the storm came ashore twice, but also that the storm has been going on for a long time. The storm started more than a month ago off the coast of Australia. At the end of February, the storm arrived in southern Africa.
That route is also striking. It’s not often that a tropical storm travels thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean. Similar storms have “crossed” the ocean all the way from east to west only four times before, according to NOAA meteorologists.
