Tropical Cyclone Freddy hit the coast of Southern Africa for a second time over the weekend, bringing its total death toll to more than 220 people in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar.
The month-long storm has broken at least one record and could break two more, meteorologists say. As climate change causes warmer oceans, heat energy from the water’s surface is fueling.
By Tuesday afternoon, authorities counted 190 people dead in Malawi with hundreds more injured and missing. The official death toll in neighboring Mozambique stood at 20.
Many of the dead were killed by mudslides in hilly Blantyre, Malawi’s second-biggest city. Torrential rain swept away thousands of homes and uprooted trees, leaving residents staring in disbelief at huge ravines in the roads and having to clamber across makeshift bridges as the rain continued.
Bodies were still being brought out from the devastation. The scale of the damage and loss of life is still unknown as search and rescue operations continue.
Almost 60,000 people have been affected, of which about 19,000 were displaced from their homes, Malawi’s government sa
Freddy developed off the coast of Australia, crossed the entire south Indian Ocean, and travelled more than 8,000km (4,970 miles) to make landfall in Madagascar and Mozambique in late February.
It then looped back and hit the coast of Mozambique again two weeks later before moving inland to Malawi.
“No other tropical cyclones observed in this part of the world have taken such a path across the Indian Ocean in the past two decades,” said the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
BY ALJAZEERA