Cyclone Idai highlights the need for neighbouring African countries to share storm forecasts
Making headlines across southern Africa, Tropical cyclone Idai hit the Mozambique Channel before making a landfall in Beira mid-month in March. The cyclone then traveled westward until it spent itself. At landfall, majority of the impact of the storm was meted out causing storm surge damage, flooding, and excessive wind-speed in the central region of Mozambique.
Thousands of people have been rendered homeless and displaced as a result of the flooding. The number of people who have lost their lives in the week succeeding the landfall have gone up. The impact reached South Africa damaging transmission lines.
A look back at the history books shows that nine storms morphing into tropical cyclone intensity made landfall on Mozambique. Eline, in February 2000 ranks as the most severe tropical cyclone to make landfall in Mozambique with a category 4 intensity on landfall which resulted in 150 deaths, 1000 casualties from flooding, four ships sunk, and 300 000 people displaced.
By definition, Tropical cyclones are large storm systems. Directly surrounding the eye of the storm is relatively calm weather with the absence of wind and rain. Spirals of storm clouds span a minimum radius of 100km. The cloud bands represent thunder storm conditions.
The lowest intensity cyclones i.e. category 1 tropical cyclone spans a 100km radius. With increased storm intensity to category 2, 3, 4 or 5, it increases in size significantly. Summarily, this concludes that cyclone Idai, s high intensity storm can have a deafening impact than the storm track that precedes it.
As climate change is on the rise and with increasing intensity, so do storms. As such the frequency of occurrence of great damage from storms is also on the rise and will cover a larger area. Climate warming has also been found to increase the stretch of the storms within any given intensity.
Tropical cyclone Idai reached category 3 intensity between 03:00-06:00 on the 11th March 2019, while positioned far eastward of the storm track. By 3:00 the following day, the storm had fizzled out to category 2 intensity, and it fluctuated between intensities of categories 2 and 3 over the 36 hours that followed. From noon on the 13th of March, the storm maintained a category 3 intensity which persisted until landfall the following day.
For the many countries that were affected, the common denominator is the absence of political boundaries between them. Countries need to communicate more with each other to prevent the loss of life and property. To do this, coherent messages about storm forecasts need to be shared to facilitate effective evacuations.
Effective adaptation is also pivotal in making preparations for the affected regions with the increased severity of these storms.