After brushing Mauritius with strong winds and torrential rain on Tuesday, Tropical Storm Freddy was prepared to hit eastern Madagascar, according to monitoring.
The storm, which was 500 kilometers (310 miles) distant, was forecast to hit the island’s eastern shore on Tuesday night, according to the UN’s disaster organisation OCHA.
It predicted that the storm will be “likely at an extreme stage,” packing winds as strong as 120 kilometres per hour (75 miles per hour). On Monday, Freddy traveled 190 kilometers from the French island of La Reunion and around 120 kilometers northeast of Mauritius.
According to the French forecaster Meteo-France, while being predicted to have significantly weakened, it will still deliver “devastating winds” and “extremely dangerous circumstances.”
More than 2.3 million people in Madagascar might be impacted by Freddy, which will also move through Mozambique and Zimbabwe, according to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).
During the yearly hurricane season of November to April, the sizable island in the Indian Ocean regularly suffers a number of blows.
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated Freddy is the first cyclone and the second tropical weather system to make landfall this season.
A journalist in Madagascar’s capital said that flights to the country’s eastern shore districts had been canceled. Since Sunday, law enforcement has been going through the streets in all-terrain vehicles fitted with loudhailers to advise residents to keep cautious. Schools and other shelters were beginning to see an influx of women and children.