Africa-Press – Mozambique. Tropical storm Gombe reached the coast of Mozambique at around 3 a.m. local time on Friday as a powerful cyclone, with torrential rain and winds of 165 kilometres per hour, and gusts of over 200km/hour, announced the French weather centre on the island of Réunion.
The weather centre, which monitors cyclones in the southwest Indian Ocean, said that Gombe had made landfall between the towns of Mogincual and Terrene, 50km south of the Island of Mozambique, in Nampula province. Nampulo is the country’s most populous province, home to one fifth of its 30 million or so people.
Despite repeated attempts, Lusa has been unable to establish communication via mobile networks with the Island of Mozambique. On Thursday, operators had already warned that the service in the area could be affected.
The area is experiencing cyclonic rain and wind as the storm moves towards the provincial capital of Nampula, where weather conditions have been worsening since dawn, residents of the city told Lusa.
“There is stronger and stronger wind,” but the rain “has not yet been intense,” said one of the sources, adding that so far only a little damage had been caused such as roads becoming blocked in some neighbourhoods.
Mozambique’s National Institute for Disaster Management (INGD) said on Thursday night that it was monitoring the situation.
Gombe has hit Mozambique two years after Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth respectively battered the central and northern regions of the country in what was one of the most severe rainy seasons in living memory. Those two cyclones – the biggest ever – alone killed 648 people out of the 714 killed in storms in 2019.
According to the latest assessment by the INGD, 72 people have died so far in the current rainy and cyclonic season, which runs from October until the end of April. Most of the deaths were caused by landslides and floods, and others by lightning and fires.
Until the end of the season, campaigns warning residents to stay away from flood zones and to keep food and other essential items to be placed in safe areas continue to run.
