Africa's Katrina - Mozambique Typhoon & Flooding Creates An "Inland Ocean" 30 Miles Wide

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t’s going to be a long century.

Jeff Masters in Weather Underground:

Over 400 are dead and countless more are at grave risk, huddled on rooftops or clinging to trees, in the horrifying aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Idai in Mozambique. In scenes reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, aerial survey teams photographed thousands of marooned people in the “inland ocean” up to 30 miles wide that heavy rains from Idai have created in central Mozambique.

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Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall on Thursday evening as a Category 2 storm with 110 mph winds just north of Beira, Mozambique (population 530,000) near the time of high tide, driving a devastating storm surge into the city. The cyclone also caused enormous wind damage, ripping off hundreds of roofs in Mozambique’s fourth largest city. Since the cyclone was large and moving slowly at landfall, near 6 mph, it was a prodigious rainmaker, with satellite-estimated rainfall amounts in excess of 2 feet in much of central Mozambique. Idai stalled and died over the high terrain along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border on Saturday, but Idai’s remains hovered over the region through Tuesday, bringing additional heavy rains–over a foot in eastern Zimbabwe. Runoff from these rains have submerged huge portions of central Mozambique. Damage to improverished Mozambique, whose GDP is just $12 billion, will be many billions of dollars and take more than five years to recover from.

Over 400 deaths have been officially attributed to the storm, including the 122 deaths that occurred in northern Mozambique and southern Malawi in early March from the tropical disturbance that eventually became Idai. The subsequent landfall of Idai is being blamed for 202 deaths in Mozambique, 102 deaths in Zimbabwe, 7 in South Africa, and 3 in Madagascar. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique said he expects the toll to exceed 1000 in that nation, which would make it their deadliest storm on record.

Officials in Zimbabwe said they expect the death toll to reach 350 there. According to EM-DAT, this would be the deadliest flood on record for Zimbabwe, exceeding the toll of 251 in January 2017 from Tropical Cyclone Dineo.

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EDIT

https://climatecrocks.com/2019/03/21/africas-katrina/