(Photo: Twitter)
Tropical Cyclone Freddy’s extraordinary journey will now be reviewed in minute detail to determine if it really was the longest-running tropical cyclone yet.
This cyclone crossed the entire southern Indian Ocean before causing large-scale destruction in South-East Africa in February and March.
An international panel of experts will now check all the data in the finest detail in order to determine whether Freddy has set a new record. However, this will take months, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warns in advance.
The current record is currently held by Hurricane John, which raged as a hurricane for a total of 31 days in 1994.
Freddy raged for at least 36 days. However, it is not a done deal that it breaks the record.
Randall Cerveny, the WMO’s gatekeeper for world weather records, says that the decision ultimately rests on the assessment of the times when Freddy went below 34 knots – 63 km/h – before he picked up speed again.
“The fundamental question will be: do we count the time when it went below tropical storm status?” explains Cerveny, a professor of geographic sciences at Arizona State University who founded the WMO archive in 2007.
This archive for extreme weather is based in Geneva and contains a variety of records including temperature, air pressure, rainfall, wind speed, hail and lightning.
“We have to go back and do the hard work – look at the exact numbers and values. It will take time, but it will be a very comprehensive study,” says Cerveny.
For each potential new record, Cerveny puts together a panel of the world’s leading experts in that field. The groups vary in size from ten to more than 20 experts and meet virtually.
The panel that will review Freddy consists of scientists from the US National Hurricane Center, experts in monitoring hurricanes through satellite imagery, National Weather Service meteorologists from across the Indian Ocean and general climatologists.
“These scientists are the best of the best, and once they make a decision, I think everyone will be able to live with it,” says Cerveny.
“These discussions can be really amazing. We actually rewrote some of the fundamental definitions in meteorology in previous discussions,” says Cerveny, referring to how lightning flashes are defined.
“I expect that will be the case here when we make a decision whether we will work with the time frame when Freddy was under tropical storm status.”
A funeral for some of the victims of Tropical Cyclone Freddy in Malawi. (Photo: Amos Gumulira/AFP)
Freddy developed as a tropical storm off the northern Australian coast on 6 February and hit Madagascar by 21 February. The tropical storm wreaked havoc on this island before it reached Mozambique on 24 February.
From there, Freddy brought heavy rain and flooding across Mozambique and Zimbabwe before turning back to the coast, getting a second wind and hitting Madagascar again.
Freddy also impacted Mozambique and Malawi again, causing flooding and mudslides that swept away homes, roads and bridges.
Hundreds of deaths were reported in the process before Freddy finally unleashed his rampage in mid-March.
