The cyclone has been intense for 35 days and has moved from Australia to East Africa.
Sydney/Maputo. When a tropical storm formed over the Timor Sea between Western Australia and Indonesia on the morning of February 6, the Australian meteorological agency dubbed it “Freddy”. At the time, nobody suspected that the cyclone would rewrite climate history: because five weeks later it’s still going strong – it’s a record since the beginning of meteorological records.
From today, Monday, it’s 35 days. So far, typhoon or hurricane “John”, which swept across the central and eastern Pacific for 31 days in 1994, and hurricane San Ciriaco of 1899 matched each other: also lasted 31 days, swept the mid-Atlantic through the Caribbean, the US – It moved up the east coast and then east until it dissipated over the North Atlantic.
Freddy crossed the Indian Ocean to the west in a fairly straight line, but he didn’t let off steam. On the contrary: Mozambique was hit by rain, storms and floods over the weekend – for the second time. Because Freddy had already arrived in Mozambique after crossing Madagascar on February 24th, but he went back to Madagascar and from there to the west again. The poor African country has received more than a year’s worth of rain in the last four weeks. At least 28 people died as a result of the storm.
A rare storm route
Freddy’s route is a rare one: According to climate researchers Micheal Pillay and Jennifer Fitchett, warming seas have shifted the places where hurricanes form toward the poles over the past 30 years. According to meteorologists, the energy concentrated in Freddy corresponds to that of an entire average hurricane season in the North Atlantic. (bark)
(“Die Presse”, print edition, March 13, 2023)