Cyclone Chapala made an extremely rare landfall along the Gulf of Aden coast of Yemen Tuesday, triggering massive rainfall flooding in a desert location unaccustomed to tropical cyclone landfalls.
According to the India Meteorological Department, the agency sanctioned by the World Meteorological Organization for issuing official tropical cyclone bulletins for the Arabian Sea, the center of Chapala made landfall about 44 miles (71 kilometers) southwest of Al Mukalla, Yemen, as of 7 a.m. Tuesday Yemen time.
At that time, IMD estimated the cyclone's maximum sustained winds from 75-80 mph (120-130 kph), a Category 1 equivalent storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, the first such intensity landfall in southern Yemen in at least 55 years. (More on the historical perspective is below.)
Chapala's core of hurricane-force winds passed near, or just west of Yemen's fifth largest city, the coastal, war-ravaged port of Al Mukalla, with a population of roughly 300,000.
IMD promptly downgraded Chapala to a tropical storm in the hours immediately after landfall.
While battering waves and coastal flooding hammered the coast, perhaps the most severe impact in Yemen was due to torrential rainfall.
Yearly Rainfall in 1-2 Days
Credit to weather.com
http://www.weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/cyclone-chapala-yemen-oman-arabian-peninsula
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