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Cyclone Freddy — a former hurricane-force storm that has struck Mozambique for the second time — is cementing its status as the most unrelenting tropical cyclone on record. On March 7, it became the longest-lived tropical cyclone on record. Now it has broken the record for the most energetic storm on the planet.
The never-ending storm, which first developed between western Australia and Indonesia on February 6, has already carved a 5,500-mile path into southeastern parts of Africa. It hit Madagascar on February 19 and Mozambique for the first time on February 24. Having crossed the Mozambique Channel three times in a row, Freddy is now in the middle of his second Mozambique landing.
On Sunday, Freddy was near the Zambezi Estuary in Mozambique and had winds of about 55 miles per hour. The storm crossed the coast on Saturday as the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane before gradually losing strength overland.
The storm has been blamed for 27 deaths in Madagascar and Mozambique as it hit the two countries last month. At least one person died when it made its second landfall in Mozambique this weekend, Portal reports, but the full extent of the cyclone’s impact is still unknown because “communications and power supplies were disrupted in the storm area.”
Freddy’s record-breaking longevity and bouts of intensification
Freddy twice reached Category 5 strength over the open southern Indian Ocean in mid-February and was named for 34 days. This eclipses previous world record holder Hurricane John, which spent 31 days between August 11 and September 13, 1994 as a named Pacific storm.
In addition, Freddy has quickly intensified an unprecedented Seven times, compared to the previous record, which was four times. Rapid intensification describes a jump of 35 mph or more in a storm’s winds in 24 hours or less. While most major hurricanes and storms intensify rapidly at least once, anything that happens more than three times in a storm’s life cycle is an exception.
The world’s most energetic tropical cyclone
After breaking records for lasting so long and intensifying so many times, Freddy managed to become Earth’s most energetic storm on record after hitting a key threshold this weekend.
BREAKING: Today at 06Z (2pm Manila Time), Cyclone #Freddy will be the first ever tropical cyclone to reach 86 ACE (86.07).
Yesterday at 12Z it also became the first storm to last 35 DAYS (35.5 days at 06Z today).
ACE – Accumulated Cyclone Energy pic.twitter.com/XKIJpp4sMV
— Matthew Cuyugan (@MatthewCuyugan) March 12, 2023
How much energy flows through a storm is calculated by a metric known as ACE, or Accumulated Cyclone Energy. It reflects both the intensity and duration of a storm. Storms extract this energy from warm ocean water and use it up through their winds and by producing precipitation.
By Saturday night, Freddy had reached approximately 86 ACE units, surpassing the record of 85.26 set by Hurricane and Typhoon Ioke in August-September 2006. That’s more ACE than 100 of the last 172 Atlantic hurricane seasons – not individual storms, but ACE for entire seasons.
While Freddy has set records for rapid intensification, longevity, and distributed energy, he hasn’t spent his entire life at hurricane strength. It weakened into a tropical storm after making landfall in Madagascar on February 21, and then into a depression days later after making its first landfall in Mozambique.
Freddy is likely to finally dissipate late Monday or early Tuesday as it unloads its heavy rains in northern and central Mozambique. In some places you could see about 25 inches.
While the mean circulation left behind by Freddy’s remains could drift back southeast across the Mozambique Channel into Wednesday, the tattered tropical guts appear to have no chance of reviving.
Jason Samenow contributed to this report.