Here in the Southeast US, we aren’t really thinking about tropical storms at this time of year, but in other parts of the world, they can occur in almost any month of the year. This year, Tropical Cyclone Freddy started as a tropical storm in the eastern Indian Ocean on February 6 and moved westward over the next month before bouncing between the island nation of Madagascar and the southeastern African coastal country of Mozambique where it made its final landfall on March 11. This makes it the longest-lived tropical cyclone on record, breaking the old record of Hurricane/Typhoon John, which roamed the central and western Pacific Ocean over the course of 30 days from mid-August through mid-September 1994, according to NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division. As Freddy came onshore, the winds and heavy rain from the storm cause a lot of destruction as well as the deaths of more than 300 people (and still rising). You can read more about Freddy at Weather.com at https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2023-03-06-tropical-cyclone-freddy-mozambique-madagascar-record and the devastation it caused at Inside Climate News here.
