Named Chapala, the storm is brewing in the Arabian Sea and is expected to make landfall in northern Yemen and the adjoining Oman coast around midnight Monday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.
Advertisement
The country isn’t used to finding itself in the path of tropical cyclones.
Residents said the seafront promenade and many homes had been destroyed by the cyclone, while officials in the dry hinterland province of Shabwa said about 6,000 people had moved to higher ground.
“The “very severe cyclonic storm” brought maximum sustained winds of 130 km/h with gusts of up to 145 km/h when it made landfall”, it said in a joint update on Tuesday with India’s meteorological agency. However, warmer sea surface temperatures are consistent with stronger hurricanes and rapid intensification.
Forecasters expect the storm to weaken as it crosses Yemen and Oman late on Monday. With heavy rainfall comes the threat of destructive landslides and flooding, as rain water flows down from higher elevations towards the coast.
Forecasts have a few parts of Yemen receiving upwards of 24 inches of rain and widespread areas getting 2 to 8 inches.
Rivers running from these mountains that are normally dry or feature very low flow would see rapid rises with rainfall of this magnitude, which could be destructive or deadly.
Muscat: A tropical depression in the Arabian Sea will turn into a cyclone nicknamed Chapala in the coming 72 hours, according to the Public Authority for Civil Aviation. In the Atlantic or Eastern Pacific, a cyclone would be known as a hurricane.
WFP regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa told Qatar News Agency (QNA) that Oman’s Salalah port, which lies within the storm’s range, is the main artery for humanitarian aid to Yemen and in case of its closure WFP projects in Yemen would be severely affected.
Chapala is the second most intense storm on record in the Arabian Sea and the strongest storm on record so far south in the Arabian Sea.
“Three people were killed, around 100 have been injured”, said a local official, without describing the causes of death.
In May 1999, Cyclone ARB 01 slammed into Pakistan near Karachi as a strong Category 3 equivalent storm, killing at least 700 in Pakistan.
Advertisement
“Yemen is possibly the worst country that this could happen to because the conflict has just decimated its communications system, its electricity grid, [and] there’s no functioning central government”, Goldman says.
