Whilst the Arabian Sea commonly has a few cyclones each year, there are none on record that have made landfall at hurricane strength in Yemen, according to NOAA’s historical hurricane track database.
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“OCHA and United Nations agencies are monitoring, planning and pre-positioning relief in preparation for the landfall of the storm”, United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters in New York.
The storm is expected to make landfall on Tuesday as a Category 1 storm.
In al-Mahra, Yemen’s easternmost province, security officials said dark clouds are forming amid unusually strong winds, though no damage has been reported yet.
It has 50,000 inhabitants, mostly fishermen.
The effects of the cyclone, it added, would be felt over large parts of Yemen but were likely to be more severe in Shabwa and Hadramawt.
The cyclone is expected to be the worst to hit Yemen since 2008, when flooding killed 180 people.
In the provincial capital Mukalla, whose 300,000 people are largely ruled by al Qaeda fighters since the army withdrew in April, water submerged cars on city streets and caused dozens of families to flee to a hospital for fear of rock slides. In case the Chapala cyclone expected to hit the coast on the night of Monday to Tuesday.
Yemen has a record of being significantly affected even with weak tropical cyclones but due to the combined effects of the storm and political, social and environmental stress already present in the country.
At the moment, Cyclone Chapala is over the very warm waters of the Arabian Sea, with sustained winds of 155mph and gusts of around 190mph.
Officials also said that the damaging winds have cut power to parts of the area. Storms of this kind that happen in the Indian Ocean (where the Arabian Sea is) are called cyclones; they’re called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific and typhoons in the Northwest Pacific.
As much as 5-10 inches of rain is forecast, more than the region typically receives in a year, according to AccuWeather.
Reports say the country is unprepared to take on the disaster.
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The storm, which brewed in the Arabian Sea, had on Monday caused extensive damage on the Yemeni island of Socotra, located a few 380 kilometers (238 miles) off the mainland.
