As one tropical cyclone starts to fade another is born

Over the past week Tropical Cyclone Funso has been drifting slowly southwards through the Mozambique Channel, giving torrential rain to eastern parts of Mozambique.

The heavy rains have caused severe flooding, with people killed, hundreds left homeless and thousands without a clean water supply.

Funso isn’t a big tropical cyclone in the physical sense, but it has been intense and slow moving, which is why similar areas have experienced bad weather for so long.

After almost a week of drifting around, it’s finally going to start to weaken over the next few days as it pushes southwards into cooler waters – losing its energy source.

However, just as Funso begins to fade, the weather computer models are picking up signs of another potential storm that may form to the north east of Madagascar during the weekend.

Early next week it could move across the eastern side of the country bringing the risk of damaging winds, heavy rain and flooding.

It’s not just the African continent on cyclone watch. A tropical cyclone formation alert has been issued for a tropical low to the north west of Australia.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology are forecasting that the tropical low will become a category 2 storm by the end of the week and continue to drift towards the northern coast of Western Australia.

Is it normal to have tropical cyclones at this time of year?

For this part of the world, yes it is. The tropical cyclone season in the southern hemisphere normally lasts from November to April, which is when summer occurs here.

What is needed for a tropical cyclone to form?

– A source of warm, moist air with the temperature at the surface of the oceans at 27C or more

– Winds at the surface converging together and forcing air upwards, allowing thunderstorms to form

– Enough distance from the equator to provide some spin to get the storm to circulate.

– Winds that don’t change too much with increasing height in the atmosphere. This allows the storm to form without getting torn apart.

So as you can see, there are quite a few things that need to be in place before these powerful storms can get going.

If you’re interested in tracking the storms over the next few days, you can do so on the Joint Typhoon Warning Center website. It has regularly updated forecast tracks for each storm. I’ll also be tweeting updates on Twitter – @liamdutton