Cyclone Kenneth slams Mozambique, less than two months after Cyclone Idai
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall around 4 p.m. local time on April 25, according to the U.K. national weather office.
(Bloomberg) — Tropical Cyclone Kenneth slammed into Mozambique, raising the prospect of new flooding in a region inundated by a similar storm two months ago.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall around 4 p.m. local time on April 25, the United Kingdom national weather office said on its Twitter account. The Mozambican government urged residents in low-lying areas of its northern provinces to evacuate to higher ground, while authorities in neighboring Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Malawi warned of possible flooding.
Cyclone Kenneth is the first hurricane-strength storm ever recorded in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, according to forecaster AccuWeather Inc. Mozambique’s weather office forecast the storm may dump more than 4 inches of rain on the north of the country within 24 hours.
Related: Mozambique cholera cases top 1,000 in wake of Cyclone Idai
Key developments
The storm passed over the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros earlier on Thursday, uprooting trees, destroying dozens of houses and forcing hundreds of people to seek shelter.
At least three people died, President Azali Assoumani said at a briefing in the capital, Moroni, where he appealed to donors for immediate humanitarian aid.
Kenneth’s arrival comes just as crops including cotton, maize, soybeans and millet are about ready to be harvested, so the storm could have a devastating impact on Mozambique’s agriculture, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia.
“That is a big agricultural area and it is coming in at a bad time,” Watson said. “The problem is it is coming on the heels of Idai, so the additional impacts on the economy are not going to be great.”
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