Cyclone Freddy to slam Mozambique Friday in rare second hit

STILL recovering from the effects of the first battering, the southeastern African nation of Mozambique is bracing for a rare second hit by long-living Tropical Cyclone Freddy late on Friday night, a regional weather center said Tuesday.

The United Nations’ monitoring station on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion warned that Freddy will “gradually intensify to the stage of a tropical cyclone or even an intense tropical cyclone” over the Mozambique Channel before making landfall overnight on Friday into Saturday.

Freddy is expected to intensify this Thursday as it approaches coastal Mozambique, with current windspeeds at sea averaging 110 kilometers (around 70 miles) per hour, gusts of 155 kilometers (around 100 miles) an hour. It’s projected to make landfall in Zambezia, the country’s second most populous province.

Its reemergence has baffled meteorologists with its constant shift of direction and multiple record-breaking feats. Freddy has intensified four separate times, a first for a