Cyclone Chapala heads for war-torn Yemen

Meteorologist’s claim a major storm system tracks towards Arabian coast, with Yemen’s port city of Mukalla potentially lying in its path.
Cyclone Chapala has tracked west from its position in the Arabian Sea, potentially taking it on a path towards eastern Yemen’s war-torn sea port of Mukalla and its population of 300,000 people.
The storm is expected to bring torrential rain, thunderstorms, strong winds and damaging storm surges when it makes landfall at some stage on Monday.
While Chapala weakened on Saturday night after reaching Category 4 status a day earlier, the cyclone was still packing sustained winds of about 200 km/h, according to the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC).
The JTWC reported that Chapala was expected to continue weakening as it closed in on the coast over the next 36 hours, but was still on track to make landfall as a major storm with sustained winds of about 130 km/h on Monday evening.

Read also: Rains kill hundreds in Asia

Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters wrote on Saturday night that “Chapala’s southward track will make it only the second tropical cyclone recorded near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden”.
“As it moves ashore, Chapala will slam into steep mountains near the coast, boosting its potential to dump several years’ worth of rain in just a day or two”, he said.
It is not known how much impact the storm will have on Yemen’s coastal residents – especially those in Mukalla. Yemen is stuck in the middle of a brutal war, which has seen least 5,400 people killed and 1.5 million people displaced since March.
Taking advantage of the fighting taking place elsewhere in the country, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seized Mukalla in mid-April, asserting itself as a defender of Sunni Muslims threatened by the Shia Houthi fighters, and as a modicum of stability in a bitterly divided tribal region.
Credit: Al Jazeera

RipplesNigeria …without borders, without fears

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now