Africa’s Hurricane Katrina: Tropical Cyclone Idai Causes an Extreme Catastrophe
Dr. Jeff Masters · March 20, 2019, 2:22 PM EDT
Above: Residents stand on rooftops in a flooded area of Buzi (population 200,000), in central Mozambique, on March 20, 2019, after the passage of cyclone Idai. Image credit: ADRIEN BARBIER/AFP/Getty Images.
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Over 400 are dead and countless more are at grave risk, huddled on rooftops or clinging to trees, in the horrifying aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Idai in Mozambique. In scenes reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, aerial survey teams
photographed thousands of marooned people in the “inland ocean” up to 30 miles wide that heavy rains from Idai have created in central Mozambique.
Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall on Thursday evening as a Category 2 storm with
110 mph winds just north of Beira, Mozambique (population 530,000) near the time of high tide, driving a devastating storm surge into the city. The cyclone also caused enormous wind damage, ripping off hundreds of roofs in Mozambique’s fourth largest city. Since the cyclone was large and moving slowly at landfall, near 6 mph, it was a prodigious rainmaker, with satellite-estimated rainfall amounts in excess of 2 feet in much of central Mozambique.
Idai stalled and died over the high terrain along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border on Saturday,
but Idai’s remains hovered over the region through Tuesday,
bringing additional heavy 💧 rains--over a foot in eastern Zimbabwe. Runoff from these rains 💧 have submerged huge portions of central Mozambique. Damage to improverished Mozambique, whose GDP is just $12 billion, will be many billions of dollars and take more than five years to recover from. Full article with several eye opening 👀 graphics:https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Africas-Hurricane-Katrina-Tropical-Cyclone-Idai-Causes-Extreme-Catastrophe