At least nine people have died after Tropical Storm Eloise made landfall in Mozambique’s Sofala province on Saturday, January 23, according to DW.

The Mozambique National Institute of Meteorology (INAM) said the province received about 200mm of rain on Saturday, accompanied by winds of 130 kilometres per hour.

Many parts of Beira were flooded as the storm wreaked havoc, uprooting trees and blowing the roofs off houses in informal settlements.

The storm continued to move West across the country on Saturday night and is expected to impact the North Eastern parts of South Africa in the following days.

“Eloise is currently over the extreme northern parts of Limpopo resulting in heavy rain in some areas of Limpopo and Mpumalanga today and later northern KZN. The main concern will be rainfall. Winds will not be a major factor,” the South African Weather Service tweeted on Sunday morning.

SAWS forecaster Lulama Pheme told IOL that the threshold for heavy rain is 50 millimetres, but they are expecting between 100 to 300 millimetres.

“Lives could be lost to the flooding if residents are not cautious. The usual rainfall was expected for Durban. Areas which have experienced heavy rainfall would be overly saturated and prone to flooding from normal rainfall in the week,” said Pheme.

Picture: Twitter/SAWS

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