March 8, 2023 - Record-breaking Tropical Cyclone Freddy turns back to Mozambique

Freddy
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After accomplishing a breathtaking long-distance journey that carried
it over the Indian Ocean, Madagascar, and Mozambique, Cyclone Freddy
simply won’t give up. It has spent most of the last two weeks careening
like a pinball back and forth over the Mozambique Channel, creating
chaos in both the island of Madagascar and the African country of
Mozambique, where it brought extreme rains, flooding and at least 21
deaths between the two countries.

It has also racked up an impressive set of all-time records.

As of March 8, Tropical Cyclone Freddy appears to have captured the
title of the longest-lasting tropical cyclone of all time, passing the
31-day record set by Hurricane/Typhoon John in 1994. The World
Meteorological Organization (WMO) will open an investigation to confirm
that record, but not until the storm has dissipated. The storm also set
the record for all-time high accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), an index
measuring wind energy over cyclone life. The WMO noted that Freddy’s
super zonal track across the entire Indian Ocean is extremely rare,
with only 2 cases recorded. Freddy also seems to have captured first
place in rapid intensification, which occurs when wind speeds increase
35 mph or more within 24 hours. Freddy has undergone rapid
intensifications six times—three more times than any storm in the
Southern Hemisphere and two times more than any in the Northern
Hemisphere.

Freddy became a named storm off the Australian coast February 6. It
crossed the entire South Indian Ocean and made landfall in Madagascar
on 21 February, crossed the island, then made landfall over Mozambique
on February 24. Instead of dissipating over land, as expected, Freddy
took a surprise turn to the east and once again found the Mozambique
Channel, emerging as a weak tropical low on March 1. By March 5, Freddy
was a tropical storm just off the coast of southwestern Madagascar, but
by the next day it had spun northwestward across the Channel and began
another round of rapid intensification.

On March 8 at 0300 UTC (March 7 at 10:00 p.m. EST), the Joint Typhoon
Warning Center (JTWC) reported that Tropical Cyclone Freddy was
carrying maximum sustained winds of 138 mph (122 km/h), which places it
as a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. It
was located about 53 miles east of Europa Island and was traveling
northwest. Europa Island is a small atoll located about one-third of
the way between southern Madagascar and southern Mozambique. The JTWC
expects Freddy to weaken before making landfall on Mozambique on March
11.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board
NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of Tropical Cyclone
Freddy on March 7, shortly after it turned away from Madagascar (east)
to make a return to Mozambique (west).

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 3/7/2023
Resolutions: 1km (2.4 MB), 500m (6.6 MB), 250m (5.7 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2023-03-08

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