Rare cyclone to hit Yemen

[The Blue Flower]

http://www.weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/cyclone-chapala-yemen-oman-arabian-peninsula

Cyclone Chapala is headed for an extremely rare landfall at hurricane strength along the coast of war-torn Yemen late Monday or early Tuesday (mainland U.S. time). While wind damage will be a threat near the point of landfall, the bigger concern will be extremely heavy rainfall in a normally arid region, leading to life-threatening flash floods in a country already suffering a major humanitarian crisis stemming from years of violent conflict.

The eye of Chapala has already passed by Socotra, just to the north of the island, where flooding rain and damaging winds were reported. The island has likely not experienced a cyclone of hurricane-equivalent intensity since 1922.

(MORE: Cyclone Chapala Lashes Socotra with Flooding, Damaging Winds)

Chapala was a Category 3 equivalent storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale as of Monday morning (mainland U.S. time). It had rapidly intensified to a high-end Category 4 early Friday and remained in that Category through most of Saturday. This made Chapala the strongest tropical system so far south in the Arabian Sea on record.