Cyclone IDAI and Cyclone Kenneth -> Mozambique
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@WXcycles
Keep in mind that wave model has a 13 km resolution (WAM) or even 22km (wavewatch).
When you zoom a lot, wave heights are not so accurate. -
I figure a forecast which indicates a big local problem with sea and wave heights is the message to emphasize at this point. ;-)
Note that the river mouths and bay are about 16 km across:
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Tropical Cyclone IDAI - 105 kt winds with 130 kt gusts @ 944 hPa
Around 7 hours to landfall at time of posting.
The track plot point intervals are spaced 6 hours apart.
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@WXcycles
In addition to high waves and tide, RSMC La Réunion forecast a storm surge near 4m in the southern semi-circle, which could reach 6m in the river mouth Pungwe where Beira is located (about half of a million inhabitants). They say that storm surge could hit this area at same time as high tide, which is fortunately only 1m above mean sea level at the moment.
It‘s a very bad scenario. -
Thanks for that. Looking like an ugly situation for people there, I hope they got enough warning. That eye appears to be around 100 km across with a wide CDO band so it's going to drag a lot of water. Dvorak indication of 130 kt gusts at present.
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The sun just went down and the tide reaches its highest level in 2 hrs and 15 mins.
Beira Tide:
https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Beira-Mozambique/tides/latestLatest satellite images:
The whole city is a huge collection of haphazard slums that have next to no streets, built on a gigantic swamp with a city draped over the top of it. If you look closely you can see successive older major storm-surge scour-lines hundreds of meters inland, all along the NE beach frontage. Roads are mostly dirt in the area, the rail line into the city is likely to be cut due to major flooding, plus the port and local boats will be out of commission due to the surge and waves. Leaving a battered airport to provide limited outside relief and medical evacuation. The numerous food and cropping plots are likely to be flooded by salt water as canals cross-cut the city.
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TC IDAI - 95 kt winds and 115 kt gusts @ 952 hPa
A direct hit on Beira City, Dondo City and Buzi township with the most unfortunate location and timing to maximize the surge, wind, wave and flooding effects within the very low-laying city of Beira. The second-half of the storm has the worst onshore weather within it on satellite imagery so the worst effects will be occurring over the next 3 to 6 hours.
The currently affected area contains about 1 million people once you've counted all the surrounding small cities and towns, within about 100km of Beira. The local time is currently, 2:24 AM, on Friday, March 15, 2019, Central Africa Time (CAT) +0200 UTC. The worst of the storm effects should begin to subside as dawn light returns.
There is a 6-hourly spacing between the track-plot points.
ECMWF model demonstrated remarkable track prediction accuracy up to 5 days in advance.
The tide's flow (which I'm sure didn't go out overnight) is again coming in as the worst of the on-shore storm-surge flooding is taking place. The next HIGH TIDE in Beira is at 10:23 AM which is in about 6 hrs from now.
https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Beira-Mozambique/tides/latest
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@WXcycles
here you can find high resolution images for the area.
https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/?source=S2&lat=-19.722756810828194&lng=34.72297668457031&zoom=10&preset=1-NATURAL-COLOR&layers=B01,B02,B03&maxcc=20&gain=1.0&gamma=1.0&time=2018-09-01|2019-03-14&atmFilter=&showDates=falseThey are images in a "Google-like" resolution and are updated every day.
After "Idai" passage will have a clear vision of the flooded areas. -
here you can find the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS)
http://www.globalfloods.eu/glofas-forecasting/
The flood severity for the area is very high
(purple indicates probability to exceed a 20 year return period). -
Plot points are 6 hours apart.
Local Time: 10:35 AM, Friday, March 15, 2019 Central Africa Time (CAT) +0200 UTC
TC IDAI 75kt winds @ 967mb
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@WXcycles said in Cyclone IDAI -> Mozambique:
ECMWF model demonstrated remarkable track prediction accuracy up to 5 days in advance.
I fully agree with you. The ECMWF forecast has been very accurate. The track prediction has been stable and precise. I have not checked GFS every time, but 2 days ago it was late on landing schedule.
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Cyclone Leon–Eline - Feb 2000
" ... Late on February 17, Eline made landfall near Mahanoro, Madagascar, with 10‑minute winds of 165 km/h (103 mph). The storm rapidly weakened over land, but restrengthened in the Mozambique Channel to reach peak 10‑minute winds of 185 km/h (115 mph). On February 22, Eline made landfall about 80 km (50 mi) south of Beira, Mozambique, near peak intensity, and quickly weakened over land. ... ... Before Eline's final landfall, Mozambique was experiencing the worst floods since 1951, killing about 150 people. The additional rainfall and flooding from Eline created the country's worst natural disaster in a century. The combined effects destroyed over 250,000 ha (620,000 acres) of crop fields and killed 40,000 cattle. Eline's passage disrupted ongoing relief efforts. High levels along the Limpopo River isolated the town of Xai-Xai, with water levels along the river reaching as high as 11 m (36 ft) above normal in some areas, as well as 15 km (9.3 mi) wide. A dam broke along the river, flooding the town of Chokwe in the middle of the night and trapping several unprepared residents; this accounted for nearly half of the death toll. About 55 people drowned in Sofala Province after rescue helicopters arrived too late to save them. Around 20,000 people in the capital city of Maputo lost their homes. In addition to the floods, strong winds blew away many roofs and some entire houses made of mud. The combined effects of the preceding floods and Eline left about 329,000 people displaced or homeless, caused about 700 deaths, and damage estimated at $500 million (USD). The cyclone and the floods disrupted much of the economic progress Mozambique had made in the 1990s since the end of its civil war. ... "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Leon–Eline
I have a feeling this one will turn out to be quite a bit worse.
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@WXcycles
There are very few news about damages and deaths in Mozambique. The reason is the damages to communication installations. -
I expect it'll take about 3 to 4 more days to get an idea of what's occurred. The heavy rain over the inland areas to the west appears to ease off within about five days and go north, so will complicate recon flights until then. Plus the Beira airport will have been hammered plus no power. It’s a real pity so few grasped what happened, but how often does anyone hear news from Mozambique? So it'll be days before global media begin to wake up. If I was the Mozambique government I'd be making every possible effort to get the military to take media in there and get as much detailed footage as possible, so the awareness can be raised via video earlier.
I remember when Hurricane Katrina hit, before the storm was even passed-on some people asserted that it had all been a hyped-up non-event. I said it would be at least three days until we knew if New Orleans was OK. And it took three days for the failed levee news and video of the breach and flooding to emerge. Even modern countries with massive resources take three days to re-establish recon and basic emergency communications again after a major cyclone, so I'd give Mozambique most of a week here, especially given the storm remnant remains close. As we said before the landfall, it’s an ugly situation.
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This is going to be quite some flood, the area was already wet down a week before the cyclone hit and most of this new rain will fall within the next 5 days. It appears to be backing-out the way that it was originally forecast too move ENE (i.e. about 7 days back at the top of the thread).
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@WXcycles
according to http://www.globalfloods.eu/glofas-forecasting/
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100% of buildings in the city have been damaged and a huge number of those destroyed.
Beira looks like a 'war zone' after cyclone Idai: rescue team
18 March 2019 - 08:22
By Nico Gous
Beira in Mozambique looks like a “war zone” in the aftermath of cyclone Idai, which claimed at least 100 lives. That is what Dylan Meyrick from IPSS Medical Rescue wrote on Facebook on Sunday evening.
“Beira resembles a war zone! 100% of buildings in the city have been damaged and a huge number of those destroyed. The local population living in the rural areas have been hardest hit. Entire villages have been washed away. It has been humbling to see how these people have lost the very little that they had but are resilient and are determined to survive,” Meyrick said.
“There is no electricity and as a result infrequent water, no cellular service and no internet. The EN6 which is the only road in and out of Beira has been destroyed by flood waters about 70km from the city. This morning we estimated that up to 2,000 people need rescuing as the flood waters continue to rise.”
Cyclone Idai has wrecked havoc across Mozambique and Zimbabwe, leaving 400,000 people displaced. Rescue teams have worked up to 18 hours a day, Meyrick said. “It has been a life-changing experience for the members to have to decide who to rescue and who to leave behind. In a profession where they have to deal with situations on a daily basis that no person should, this is probably the most difficult that we have encountered.”
Another report from late yesterday:
Cyclone Idai claims 48 lives in Mozambique, 39 in Zimbabwe
Africa / 17 March 2019, 4:52pm
https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/cyclone-idai-claims-48-lives-in-mozambique-39-in-zimbabwe-19937365
UN World Food Program kicks off from a very low-base and a huge need.
UN standing with Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique during Cyclone
Monday, 18 March 2019, 3:34 pm
Press Release: UN News
"... According to the World Food Programme (WFP), preliminary projections indicate that at least 1.7 million people were affected in the direct-path of the cyclone in Mozambique, with a further 920,000 in Malawi. A spokesperson for WFP said on Sunday that teams had been active on the ground in all three countries, planning to target around 650,000 with food assistance in Malawi, and 600,000 in Mozambique. ... WFP said it would be scaling-up provision of life-saving services for the treatment of moderate-acute malnutrition in children up to 5-years of age, in communities affected by the cyclone. A WFP plane with 20 tons of emergency food assistance arrived this weekend in Mozambique; 30 WFP funded boat pilots were mobilized, and staff and material have been deployed in Beira, Zambezia and Tete. In the coming days , WFP said it will be able to scale up the response with larger distribution of food."
Indian Navy sends three ships
India to provide Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) support to Mozambique
March 18, 2019
In response to a request from the Republic of Mozambique that is hit by a tropical cyclone ‘IDAI’ of Category 4, causing loss of lives and severe damage to properties in Central and Northern part of Mozambique, Government of India has decided to divert three Indian Naval Ships (INS Sujatha, INS Shardul & INS Sarathi) to the port city of Beira to provide immediate Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) to the affected people. Indian Naval Ships will provide relief material in the form of food, clothes and medicine to the affected people. In addition, the ships have 3 medical practitioners and 5 nurses to provide immediate medical help.
In this hour of tragedy, Government of India stands ready to extend support to the affected people. India has been extending humanitarian assistance to Mozambique and had provided 10 million dollars for food grains in 2017, after it suffered food shortage as a result of natural calamities.
New Delhi
March 18, 2019 -
Cyclone Idai death toll in Mozambique 'could rise above 1,000'
President says scale of disaster is huge, as Red Cross says most of Beira damaged or destroyed
Associated Press in Johannesburg
Tue 19 Mar 2019 02.07 AEDT
First published on Mon 18 Mar 2019 11.40 AEDTThe number of people killed in Tropical Cyclone Idai and recent flooding in Mozambique could rise above 1,000, the country’s president has said, as the Red Cross said up to 90% of the port city of Beira had been damaged or destroyed.
Filipe Nyusi told the state broadcaster Radio Mozambique that although the official death count stood at 84, he believed the toll would rise to more than 1,000. The scale of the disaster was “huge”, he said, adding he had seen bodies floating in rivers while flying over the affected region.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Beira had been battered by the cyclone, cutting off electricity, closing the airport and severing road access to the city of 500,000 people.
Idai hit Beira last week before moving inland and spreading heavy winds and rain to Zimbabwe and Malawi. More than 215 people have been confirmed killed across all the affected countries, while hundreds more are missing and more than 1.5 million people have been affected by the widespread destruction and flooding, according to the Red Cross and government officials.
An aerial shot of Beria made available by the IFRC on Monday. Photograph: Caroline Haga/AP
The scale of the damage to Beira was “massive and horrifying”, said Jamie LeSueur, who led a Red Cross aerial assessment of the city. The team viewed the city by helicopter because roads were flooded. “The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous. It seems that 90% of the area is completely destroyed,” he said. With Beira airport closed, the team drove from Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, before taking a helicopter for the last part of the journey.
“Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible,” LeSueur said.
“Beira has been severely battered. But we are also hearing that the situation outside the city could be even worse. On Sunday, a large dam burst and cut off the last road to the city.”
The storm struck Beira late on Thursday and moved westward into Zimbabwe and Malawi. At least 126 people died in Mozambique and Malawi, according to the Red Cross. In Zimbabwe, 89 people died from the floods, the information ministry said.
Both Nyusi and the Zimbabwean president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, returned from foreign trips to attend to the emergencies caused by the storm. Mnangagwa returned home from the United Arab Emirates “to make sure he is involved directly with the national response by way of relief to victims of Cyclone Idai”, the information ministry said. The Zimbabwean government declared a state of national disaster.
UN agencies and the Red Cross were helping with rescue efforts that include delivering food supplies and medicines by helicopter.
More than 1,000 feared dead in Mozambique storm
Mission Aviation Fellowship/AFP / Rick EMENAKET
March 18th, 2019
… "For the moment we have registered 84 deaths officially, but when we flew over the area ... this morning to understand what's going on, everything indicates that we could register more than 1,000 deaths,"Mozambican President Felipe Nyusi said in a nationwide address. …
A large dam burst on Sunday and cut off the last road to Beira, he said. Sofala Province governor Alberto Mondlane warned that the "biggest threat we have now, even bigger than the cyclone, is floods because it’s raining more and more". Emma Beaty, coordinator of a grouping of NGOs known as Cosaco, said: "We've never had something of this magnitude before in Mozambique". Many people in the Beira region fled for their lives or took to the rooftops as the floodwaters rose. "Some dams have broke, and others have reached full capacity, they'll very soon open the flood gates. It's a convergence of flooding, cyclones, dams breaking and making a potential wave: everything's in place so we get a perfect storm," she said.
Mozambique's environment minister, Celso Correia, has also warned that the death tally would rise. "I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed," he told AFP on Sunday night at Beira international airport, which re-opened after being temporarily closed because of cyclone damage.
"Flying roofing sheets beheaded people," Rajino Paulino recounting the moment the cyclone smashed into the city. "We are sleeping rough, we are eating poorly and we don't have houses anymore." It swept away homes and ripped bridges to pieces, leaving destruction that the acting defence minister, Perrance Shiri, said "resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war". "There was a lot of destruction both on our facilities and on people," said Shiri speaking on television from the affected eastern highlands region.
Some roads were swallowed up by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods, according to an AFP photographer. "This is the worst infrastructural damage we have ever had," Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Joel Biggie Matiza said. The eastern district of Chimanimani was worst-hit, with houses and most of the region's bridges washed away by flash floods. The most affected areas are not yet accessible, and high winds and dense clouds have hampered military rescue helicopter flights.
Joshua Sacco, lawmaker for Chimanimani, told AFP that between "150 to 200 people" are missing. The majority of them are thought to be government workers, whose housing complex was completely engulfed by raging waters. Their fate is currently unknown because the area is still unreachable. "We are very worried because all these houses were just suddenly submerged under water and literally washed away and that is where we have about 147 missing," he said.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who cut short a visit to Abu Dhabi, said on arrival on Monday, "we are deeply grieved as a nation". But the government has come under fire for failing to move timesously to evacuate people. The main labour movement,the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said the disaster was avoidable. "Authorities knew about the cyclone weeks before it struck, but did absolutely nothing to prepare for its eventuality," it said in
https://www.afp.com/en/news/3954/more-1000-feared-dead-mozambique-storm-doc-1er9m73
Initial video of flooding:
https://globalnews.ca/news/5067771/mozambique-death-toll-cyclone-idai/
So it begins ...
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UK pledges £6m of aid for hundreds of thousands hit by cyclone in Mozambique and Malawi
Sean Morrison
Tuesday 19 March 2019 01:04
The Evening Standard
Britain has pledged up to £6 million of aid to send humanitarian relief to the hundreds of thousands of people affected by Cyclone Idai in Mozambique and Malawi.
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said a team of experts was on the ground in Mozambique helping to co-ordinate the UK's response. Filipe Nyusi, the president of Mozambique, said more than 1,000 people are feared dead in the country four days after the cyclone hit. Tents and thousands of shelter kits will be sent to the country on Tuesday, and Ms Mordaunt said the UK stands ready to "scale up our support if needed". ...
Ms Mordaunt said: "I have made £6 million of UK aid available to help meet the immediate needs of people who have lost everything. "We have deployed a UK team of Dfid experts who are now on the ground in Mozambique helping to co-ordinate the UK's response to this disaster, and we hope to have vital UK aid supplies in the region shortly. We stand ready to scale up our support if needed. "The images of loss and devastation following this deadly cyclone and extreme weather are shocking. The people of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe should know that they are firmly in our thoughts at this difficult time, and that the UK stands by their side."
Cyclone Idai made landfall close to the port city of Beira on Thursday with winds of up to 106 mph, but aid teams only reached the city on Sunday.
Images from CNN:
More images at source: https://us.cnn.com/2019/03/18/world/gallery/cyclone-idai-gallery/index.htmlCyclone Idai: 1,000 people may be dead, says Mozambique president
By Clyde Hughes and Darryl Coote
Updated March 18, 2019 at 10:42 PM
March 18 (UPI) -- Cyclone Idai may have killed a 1,000 people in Mozambique, President Filipe Nyusi said, and 100,000 more are still at risk. …
Nyusi fears the death toll for his country will skyrocket after having taken a flight over affected areas and seen bodies floating in flooded towns. "The waters of the Pungue and Buzi overflowed their banks making entire villages disappear and isolating communities, and bodies are floating," he said. "A real disaster of great proportions."
Making matters worse is the U.N. is projecting heavy rainfall until Thursday for Sofala and Manica provinces, which have already been devastated as a bridge over the Buzi River that connected several districts in both provinces with the rest of the country has been destroyed. The National Directorate of Water Resources is recommending people in flood-prone areas to evacuate to higher ground immediately. …
The city remains cut-off from the surrounding areas as the storm has rendered major roads impassable, according to the U.N. … Mozambique information minister Nick Mangwawa said the army and air force have been deployed for rescue efforts, as have private and public ambulances.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/03/18/4111552905895/?sl=11