It has a name for conjuring nightmares. Cyclone Freddy killed four people after hitting Madagascar on Tuesday evening, February 21. Accompanied by strong winds and torrential rain, it continued its devastating route across the big island in southern Africa on Wednesday and was due to reach the coast of Mozambique on Friday.
This Category 3 tropical cyclone affected “16,660 people” as it made landfall in Madagascar, according to an initial report by the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) released on Wednesday. Of these, nearly 11,000 had to be evacuated urgently, while 3,300 homes were flooded.
A bit of luck
Madagascar feared the arrival of Freddy, whose maximum intensity was that of a category 4 cyclone – that is, with wind speeds around 220 km / h – but which was approaching category 5, the maximum for this type of extreme weather phenomenon, reports Yale Climate Connections, a medium dependent on the famous American University Yale.
In fact, the island was already grappling with Cheneso, a previous Category 2 cyclone, back in late January. The torrential rains that fell then “degraded the soil” and increased the risk of “flooding and landslides,” Yale Climate Connections estimated.
But the residents of this region were “lucky,” says Ralf Toumi, a tropical cyclone specialist at Imperial College London. Freddy initially avoided hitting Reunion Island, which appeared to be on his way. The cyclone then largely spared Mauritius, which however experienced heavy rains.
When it finally arrived in Madagascar, it deflated “only to fall back on entering the country into a category 1 cyclone that the local authorities know how to deal with,” assures Ralf Toumi. In fact, Madagascar is the African country most exposed to these extreme events, suffering an average of 1.5 cyclones per year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Freddy should then recover a little from the cyclone’s hair by leaving Madagascar and entering the Mozambique Channel on Wednesday evening, because “the water temperature there is currently high, which is helping to accentuate the intensity of the cyclones,” Ralph points out Toumi . But the current forecast from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), America’s main center for cyclone monitoring, calls for a breathless freddy with winds barely exceeding 70 mph when it touches the coasts of Mozambique.
A unique “monster”
So the worst seems averted. If an inhabited area had been hit by Freddy at the peak of its intensity, “it would have had an apocalyptic outcome,” stressed Emmanuel Cloppet, director of Météo-France for the Indian Ocean, in an interview with Le Monde.
Because while Freddy is unlikely to mark the ghosts like other much more destructive cyclones, “it’s a unique and unprecedented phenomenon that has just occurred,” said Xiangbo Feng, a tropical cyclone specialist at the University of Reading.
Freddy is indeed a “monster” unlike anything the Indian Ocean has known before. The energy he amassed during his voyage from Australia is unparalleled for the region. “There are essentially two ways of assessing the importance of a cyclone: either we observe its maximum intensity, which is never easy and often gives rise to debate, even if it is the criterion most commonly maintained, or we are interested in all the energy which is stored during his life and which translates the potential danger of the phenomenon,” summarizes Ralf Toumi.
For example, Freddy earned a score of 66 on the University of Colorado’s Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index. It has already broken the previous Southern Hemisphere record set by Cyclone Fantala in 2016 at 53, although it has not yet completed its journey. Even in the northern hemisphere, which is known for its very violent cyclone phenomena, such as hurricanes Katrina in 2005 or Sandy in 2012 (the word “hurricane” corresponds to the term “cyclone” for the Atlantic), there are not a single two stronger events according to the ACE Index: Hurricane Three in 1899 and Ivan in 2004.
But that’s not all. “The most striking thing is the lifespan of this cyclone,” says Xiangbo Feng. Freddy has been developing as a Pacific cyclone for more than three weeks, which is “very rare”, confirms Ralf Toumi.
“It takes a confluence of weather conditions – warm, stable temperatures, similarly strong winds at sea level and above the cyclone – that you don’t often see over such a long period of time,” says the climatologist from Imperial College London.
Freddy “refuses to die”
In general, the cyclones of this region, which originate in the direction of Australia, also branch south well before Madagascar. But not Freddy, who “continued straight ahead on an unprecedented path”, say the experts interviewed by France 24.
During his journey, “he experienced four peaks of intensity, which to my knowledge never happens,” Xiangbo Feng is surprised. Typically, cyclones, hurricanes, or typhoons experience one or two peaks at most and then decrease in intensity before disappearing. “But Freddy refuses to die,” insists the University of Reading researcher.
It is therefore a phenomenon, mysterious in many ways, that has afflicted Madagascar. “One of the main scientific challenges will be to understand whether Freddy will remain a unique event in history or whether it is the first of a new series of cyclones that will share the same characteristics in the future. [des phénomènes très intenses avec plusieurs pics sur une longue période, NDLR]’ summarizes Xiangbo Feng, who is working on tools to predict this type of cyclone behavior.
“It is certain that scientists will try to see if global warming can explain the unprecedented behavior of this cyclone,” confirms Ralf Toumi. That won’t be easy, according to this expert: “We know that ocean warming is related to climate change, but it’s much more difficult to pinpoint the other factors affecting Freddy’s lifespan, such as the power of the ocean winds.”
If this is the beginning of a new “family” of hurricanes, Xiangbo Feng believes it “could be lucky because we see them coming from afar, which allows us to prepare.”