Tropical Cyclone Freddy becomes longest-lived in history with 36 days of activity in 2023

ENVIRONMENT – Freddy does better than John. While a terrible hurricane, Beryl, threatens the Caribbean particularly early for this time of year, another worrying piece of news concerns a tropical cyclone that hit part of Africa in 2023.

This powerful cyclone, named Freddy at the time, had indeed had serious human and economic consequences for the south-east of the African continent before being recognized on Tuesday, July 2, as the longest cyclone ever recorded. The UN announced that it was in fact active for 36 days, between February and March 2023.

A world record « of the longest duration of a tropical cyclone » validated at Freddy by an international committee of experts from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), according to a press release from the UN agency.

At this stage, however, the WMO refuses to make a direct link between Freddy’s unprecedented longevity and human-induced climate change. However, the agency points out that on its page devoted to tropical cyclones that “Climate change is linked not only to an increased probability of major hurricanes, but also to a direct increase in their destructive power”. Which was particularly the case with this cyclone.

“Due to its prolonged passage near and over land, Freddy was particularly destructive, particularly in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique.”notes the WMO. In Malawi, Freddy left nearly 1,200 dead or missing behind him. Not counting the injured, numbering 2,100, according to the organization’s data.

In Mozambique, more than 1.3 million people were affected, with more than 180 deaths. In Madagascar, nearly 200,000 people were affected by the first and second impacts of the cyclone.

The salutary work of Météo-France

The UN agency acknowledges that in addition to his record longevity, Freddy had a ” ability to survive multiple terrestrial interactions, which unfortunately had significant consequences for the populations of south-east Africa.”

The damage caused by Freddy is estimated at $481 million, according to the African Risk Capacity, a specialized agency of the African Union. In its report on this record set in 2023, the WMO also highlighted the crucial importance of Météo-France in anticipating this remarkable meteorological phenomenon.

Without the weather alerts issued by Météo-France from the regional center of La Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, which allowed preventive evacuations and the prepositioning of food, “the human toll would have been even higher”. An argument that pushes the organization to highlight its project to cover the entire globe with an early warning system for meteorological risks within 5 years.

Meanwhile, Freddy also makes history by dethroning Tropical Cyclone John. In 1994, it had maintained tropical storm status or higher for 714 hours after originating in the North Pacific. That’s 29.75 days, compared to 36 for Freddy.

John, however, remains the tropical storm that has covered the longest distance ever recorded with 13,159 kilometers, compared to 2,785 kilometers for Freddy in 2023.

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