Rare cyclone poised to strike Arabian Peninsula

The AccuWeather Global Weather Center has reported that “Yemen is bracing for impacts from a small, but now powerful Tropical Cyclone Chapala in the Arabian Sea”. In no time, these two storms intensified rapidly stumping meteorologists across the globe.

Yemen typically gets around 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain per year.

Authorities on the island have transported 9,000 people from their homes to other places to take refuge, mainly schools, said Socotra Deputy Governor Ramzi Mahfouz.

In the provincial capital Mukalla, which has largely been ruled by Al Qaeda fighters since the army withdrew in April, water submerged cars on city streets and caused dozens of families to flee to a hospital for fear of rock slides.

The officials said Cyclone Chapala seriously damaged or destroyed at least 20 homes on the island, where trees have been uprooted and fishing boats sank.

But on Monday it said on its Twitter account that “Category 2 Chapala expected to weaken to Category 1” as it nears Yemen and Oman, but with intense rain.

The main threat area from Chapala will be in central and southeastern Yemen where bands of heavy rain and gusty winds began to arrive on Monday.

The “very severe cyclonic storm” brought maximum sustained winds of 130 kilometres per hour with gusts of up to 145 kilometres per hour when it made landfall, it said in a joint update Tuesday with India’s meterological agency.

Yemen has a record of being significantly affected even with weak tropical cyclones but due to the combined effects of the storm and political, social and environmental stress already present in the country.

The storm presaged the approach of cyclone Chapala which is expected to hit the Yemeni mainland and Oman today.

As Chapala moves west and away from Socotra, it is heading toward the mainland of Yemen. However, cyclone landfalls in this region are rare. Damaging wind and flooding rainfall are likely near the point of landfall. Storms of this kind that happen in the Indian Ocean (where the Arabian Sea is) are called cyclones; they’re called hurricanes in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific and typhoons in the Northwest Pacific.