A storm forming in the Arabian Sea is bound for landfall on Yemen and Oman and has people fearing possible flooding and landslides, as it expected to drop the equivalent of 10 years of rainfall, as reported in a previous HNGN article.
The U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported on Monday that the storm, dubbed Cyclone Chapala, is running at a speed of 240 km/h (about 149 mph), which is equivalent to a category 4 hurricane and is believed to be the most powerful storm that Yemen has seen in decades, according to the BBC.
Set to be the first hurricane-level storm in the region this year, even when it weakens during the weekend it will still be packed with strong winds and high waves that the area is not used to and could cause damage to properties that are not prepared for storms as strong as Chapala, The Washington Post reports.
Experts say that what triggered the storm to form in an unlikely region are the high sea temperatures and atmospheric conditions. It is yet to be determined if El Niño and global warming also played a part and if it has the probability of happening again in the future.
"With climate change we're really heading into unknown territory. We can expect to see things happening in the future that never happened in the past," said Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), according to Reuters.
