Mozambique Braces For Second Cyclone In Rare Second Hit

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’ monitoring station on the Indian Ocean Island of Reunion warned that Freddy will “gradually intensify to the stage of a tropical cyclone or even an intense tropical cyclone” over the Mozambique Channel before making landfall overnight on Friday into Saturday.

Freddy 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’s second most populous province of Zambezia.

Freddy 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’s National Institute for Disaster Risk Management.

It 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.