MOMBASA
\nStill recovering from the effects of the first battering, the southeastern African nation of Mozambique is bracing for a rare second hit by long-living Tropical Cyclone Freddy late on Friday night, a regional weather center said Tuesday.
\nThe United Nations\u2019 monitoring station on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion warned that Freddy will \u201cgradually intensify to the stage of a tropical cyclone or even an intense tropical cyclone\u201d over the Mozambique Channel before making landfall overnight on Friday into Saturday.
\nFreddy is expected to intensify this Thursday as it approaches coastal Mozambique, with current windspeeds at sea averaging 110 kilometers (around 70 miles) per hour, gusts of 155 kilometers (around 100 miles) an hour, and barreling in the northeasterly direction. It is projected to make landfall on the country\u2019s second most populous province of Zambezia.
\nIts reemergence has baffled meteorologists with its constant shift of direction and multiple record-breaking feats. Freddy has intensified four separate times, a first for a tropical cyclone in the southern hemisphere. It also now holds the world record for what\u2019s known as \u201caccumulated cyclone energy,\u201d a metric to gauge a cyclone\u2019s strength over time.
\nFreddy hammered eastern Madagascar last month before moving across the channel and slamming Mozambique, killing 21 people across both nations. The deluge affected an approximate 213,000 people and destroyed over 28,000 homes in the Mozambican capital of Maputo and nearby provinces, according to Mozambique\u2019s National Institute for Disaster Risk Management.
\nIt then appeared to have dissipated before it reemerged, looping around the Mozambican Channel. It was initially destined to Madagascar for a second time but shifted course back to mainland Africa.
\nFrench weather agency Meteo-France said in a bulletin Tuesday that as Freddy gathers more pace, it also poses severe weather risks to Toliara, the capital of Madagascar\u2019s Atsimo-Andrefana region, with strong winds and the sea remaining \u201cdangerous due to the cyclonic swell.\u201d
\nFreddy is currently soaking southern Madagascar as it hovers over the channel.
\nThe UN weather agency said Freddy is on course to become the longest-lived tropical cyclone in history after traversing the entire Indian Ocean for a month.
\nNovember to April is classified as the cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean and climate scientists say that climate change is intensifying cyclones, making them longer, wetter and more frequent. ___
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MOMBASA Still recovering from the effects of the first battering, the southeastern African nation of Mozambique is bracing for a rare second hit by long-living Tropical Cyclone Freddy late on Friday night, a regional weather center said Tuesday. The United Nations\u2019 monitoring station on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion warned that Freddy will \u201cgradually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-318173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n