Tropical cyclone Freddy may be longest on record after lasting 32 days

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is contemplating whether or not tropical cyclone Freddy must be named the longest-running tropical cyclone on document because it clocks up its 32^nd day.

“Freddy is pretty unusual,” says Liz Ritchie-Tyo at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Most tropical cyclones, that are low-pressure methods that kind over heat tropical waters, solely final for about six or seven days, she says.

Freddy originated off the north-west coast of Australia on 6 February earlier than travelling greater than 7000 kilometres throughout the Indian Ocean to the south-east of Africa.

The lengthy journey of Cyclone Freddy continues.

This unbelievable three week animation reveals that journey. pic.twitter.com/JOpCwsNqnj

— CIRA (@CIRA_CSU) March 7, 2023

Since making landfall in Madagascar on 21 February, the tropical cyclone has been bouncing between Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, inflicting sturdy winds, heavy rain and flooding. It has destroyed 1000’s of properties and claimed greater than 20 lives.

Freddy has most likely lasted so lengthy as a result of the encircling wind situations have been unusually mild, says Ritchie-Tyo. Normally, tropical cyclones on this area encounter sturdy winds that push them south over colder waters and trigger them to dissipate, she says.

The present record-holder for the longest-lasting tropical cyclone is one known as John that lasted for 31 days within the Pacific Ocean in 1994.

The WMO says it’s assembling an skilled committee to determine whether or not Freddy has damaged John’s document.

Although Freddy has already lasted longer than John did, it has at instances dropped under tropical cyclone energy whereas passing over land.

“One question that we will be addressing is the fact that throughout its long lifetime, the storm has periodically weakened below tropical storm status,” Randall Cerveny of the WMO stated in a press launch. “We will obviously need to address if that is a concern in our evaluation.”

This is what number of areas of Mozambique appear like after cyclone Freddy. There remains to be extra rain arising, and most rivers within the nation’s central and southern areas have overflowed. pic.twitter.com/ggJFQPmgeR

— Zenaida Machado (@zenaidamz) February 28, 2023

To date, Freddy has generated greater than 72 models of accrued cyclone power – a measure of a cyclone’s energy over time. This places it in second place behind a tropical cyclone known as Ioke that generated 85 models in 2006.

Freddy has additionally undergone six separate durations of fast intensification, that means will increase in wind velocity of no less than 30 knots in 24 hours, which is essentially the most of any documented tropical cyclone.

Ritchie-Tyo says Freddy ought to lastly dissipate this weekend. This is as a result of the cyclone is already weakening and is predicted to go into dry situations in Mozambique on Saturday morning native time, the place “the friction of the land should wear the winds down.”

“I think it will die pretty quickly once it makes landfall this time,” she says.