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Cyclone May Bring 10 Inches of Rain to Mozambique: Storm Update

Cyclone May Bring 10 Inches of Rain to Mozambique: Storm Update

(Bloomberg) -- Cyclone Kenneth may bring as much as 10 inches of rain to Mozambique as it grinds its way across the northeast of the country this weekend, the Red Cross said.

The storm, which made landfall on Thursday, became the second to hit the nation since March, when Cyclone Idai killed more than 1,000 people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. While Kenneth’s winds have weakened, the weather system will continue to unleash downpours, raising the risk of flooding in the northern Cabo Delgado province, forecaster AccuWeather Inc. said.

Key Developments

  • Cyclone Kenneth is the first hurricane-strength storm ever recorded in Cabo Delgado province, according to forecaster AccuWeather Inc.
  • At least one person has died and another injured, while an unspecified number of houses have been damaged as a result of the storm, according to the National Meteorology Institute.

Cyclones Pose LNG Supply-Chain Risk

Intense cyclones battering Mozambique highlight the exposure of Liquefied Natural Gas companies to supply chain disruptions in a country that’s poorly equipped to deal with natural disasters, U.K.-based research firm Verisk Maplecroft said in a note.

Mozambique ranks as the 11th highest risk globally on the Natural Hazards Vulnerability Index, which measures a nation’s capacity to prepare for, respond to and recover from the impact of events such as powerful storms, it said.

At Least Three People Killed in Comoros

Cyclone May Bring 10 Inches of Rain to Mozambique: Storm Update

The storm passed over the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros earlier on Thursday, uprooting trees, destroying dozens of houses and forcing hundreds of people to seek shelter.

At least three people died, President Azali Assoumani said at a briefing in the capital, Moroni, where he appealed to donors for immediate humanitarian aid.

Corn and Cotton Harvests at Risk

Kenneth’s arrival comes just as crops including cotton, maize, soybeans and millet are about ready to be harvested, so the storm could have a devastating impact on Mozambique’s agriculture, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia.

“That is a big agricultural area and it is coming in at a bad time,” Watson said. “The problem is it is coming on the heels of Idai, so the additional impacts on the economy are not going to be great.”

Further Reading

--With assistance from Rudy Ruitenberg, Paul Burkhardt and Thomas Hall.

To contact the reporters on this story: Borges Nhamire in Maputo at bnhamire@bloomberg.net;Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net, Paul Richardson, Jacqueline Mackenzie

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