Tropical Cyclone Freddy hit central Mozambique on Sunday, bringing intense rains and winds after making landfall for a second time in as many weeks, media has reported, citing authorities.
According to the National Meteorological Institute, on Saturday morning Freddy slowed down as it approached the country and was 60 kilometers off the coast. As of now, the storm passed by the port town of Quelimane, and continued on inland towards the southern tip of neighboring Malawi.
Media reported that the storm killed at least one person, bringing the overall death toll to at least 28 since its first landfall.
Recent data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicated that more than 470,000 people had been affected by the storm’s passage in Madagascar and Mozambique last month, including almost 300,000 people in Madagascar and about 171,400 people in Mozambique.
This time the office projects that more than half a million people are at risk of being affected by the cyclone in Mozambique.
The cyclone is already dubbed as one of the strongest storms recorded in the southern hemisphere. According to the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, Freddy set a record for all-time accumulated cyclone energy, a measure of the storm’s strength over time, for the southern hemisphere, as well as globally, since Hurricane Ioke in 2006.
The cyclone, which has been swirling for 35 days, is also on course to break the record for the longest-lasting tropical cyclone, with the previous record held by a 31-day hurricane in 1994.