The death toll from flood-related accidents in Kenya has surpassed 200 since March, the interior ministry announced Friday as a storm approached the Tanzanian coast.
Torrential rains have lashed parts of East Africa, causing flooding and landslides that have wrecked crops, buried homes, and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
According to a statement from Kenya’s interior ministry, 210 people have died “due to severe weather conditions,” with 22 deceased in the last 24 hours.
More than 165,000 people had been evacuated from their homes, with 90 others missing, increasing concerns that the toll may increase further.
Kenya and adjacent Tanzania, where at least 155 people have died in flooding, are bracing for Cyclone Hidaya, which will bring heavy rain, wind, and waves to their coastlines.
Tanzanian authorities warned Friday that Hidaya had “strengthened to the status of a full-fledged cyclone” around 3:00 a.m. local time (0000GMT), about 400 kilometres (248 miles) from the southeastern city of Mtwara.
“Cyclone Hidaya has continued to strengthen further, with wind speeds increasing to about 130 kilometres per hour,” they said in a weather bulletin.
Kenya’s interior ministry predicted that the storm would “bring strong winds and large ocean waves, with heavy rainfall,” and hit the shore on Sunday.
Since September last year, Burundi’s heavier-than-usual rains have killed at least 29 people, injured 175 others, and displaced tens of thousands, according to the United Nations.
The rains have been exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern, a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that is normally associated with increasing temperatures worldwide, resulting in drought in some regions of the world and torrential downpours in others.
More than 300 people were killed by rains and floods in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia late last year as the area struggled to recover from its worst drought in four decades.
Cyclone season in the southwest Indian Ocean typically lasts from November to April and produces approximately a dozen cyclones every year.
