At a Glance

Dangerous Cyclone Freddy is grinding through Madagascar.After that, it will head into Mozambique late this week.Damaging winds, storm surge, life-threatening flooding and mudslides are possible.The cyclone has made a rare track across the entire southern Indian Ocean Basin.

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C​yclone Freddy made landfall in Madagascar on Tuesday, and will head toward southern Africa later this week after its unusual two-week-plus journey across the southern Indian Ocean.

H​ere is what you need to know about this storm, including where it is now, the forecast and some perspective on how unusual this storm may be. (Note: What we refer to as hurricanes in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific basins are known as cyclones in the Indian Ocean.)

Freddy made its first landfall: The center of Cyclone Freddy moved ashore along Madagascar's east coast near the town of Mananjary around 7 p.m. local time Tuesday (11 a.m. Eastern U.S. time). That's about 150 miles south-southeast of the country's capital city, Antananarivo. About an hour prior to the landfall, Freddy's peak winds were estimated at 115 mph, the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane. over the weekend before it reached Madagascar.

Freddy will then track into southern Africa: Freddy is forecast to continue westward into Mozambique late Thursday or early Friday, U.S. time. It's expected to do so at least at tropical storm strength, and could regenerate into Category 1 intensity before arriving in Mozambique. According to a , less than 5 percent of southwest Indian Ocean cyclones have made landfall in southern Africa.

H​ere are the threats from Freddy: Torrential rain, flash flooding and dangerous landslides in hilly or mountainous terrain are a danger in Madagascar and in parts of southern Africa, including Mozambique and potentially parts of Zimbabwe and far northeastern South Africa and Eswatini. This is happening just a month after Madagascar was struck by Cyclone Cheneso's winds and flooding rain, .

F​reddy is one of the basin's longest-track storms: Freddy first formed off the coast of southern Indonesia on Feb. 6. According to NOAA's best track database, of all cyclones in the southern Indian Ocean that became at least Category 1 intensity, . That was Cyclone Eline/Leon in February 2000.

B​y ACE, Freddy is one of the top 5 longest-lasting strong tropical cyclones anywhere on earth. ACE is accumulated cyclone energy, a metric used by scientists to measure the duration and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes around the world. Freddy surpassed Hurricane Irma in this metric Tuesday morning.

E​line/Leon was destructive: This cyclone struck Madagascar as a Category 1 storm, then rapidly intensified to Category 4 intensity before striking central Mozambique. It continued into Zimbabwe before its remnant continued into northern Botswana and Namibia, an exceptionally long track inland over southern Africa. The combination of this storm and a tropical depression earlier in the month triggered devastating flooding in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa in February 2000.

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