More worryingly, the storm's remnants in the next 10 days could dump twice as much rain as Cyclone Idai did on central Mozambique last month, World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel said. Idai killed more than 600 people and displaced scores of thousands. Buildings damaged after Cyclone Kenneth made landfall in Pemba, Mozambique. Credit:AP Kenneth struck a part of Mozambique that had never seen such a fierce storm during the age of satellite observation, forecasters said, renewing concerns about climate change and the country's vulnerable, 2400km Indian Ocean coastline. While the region that took the brunt of Kenneth is more sparsely populated than the area hit by Idai, Mozambique's disaster management agency said nearly 700,000 people could be at risk, many left exposed and hungry as flood waters rise. The UN children's agency, on the ground in Macomia, described families taking shelter in a church as Kenneth ripped apart their homes - only to watch as the church's own roof was torn away. Some schools were destroyed, it said.

The largest city in the cyclone-hit region, Pemba, had significant power outages. Wimbi Beach in Pemba, Mozambique, after Cyclone Kenneth made landfall. Credit:AP "This is a very vulnerable area, higher in poverty" than the one hit by Cyclone Idai, Red Cross spokeswoman Katie Wilkes said. Before reaching Mozambique, Kenneth hit the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros, were it flooded 1000 homes and destroyed key crops, Wilkes said. Experts caution it is premature to say whether the unprecedented double- whammy of storms to hit the southern African nation is a consequence of climate change, and whether these cyclones will become more common.

"There is no record of two storms of such intensity striking Mozambique in the same season," said Clare Nullis, a spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization. "It is difficult to pronounce on one event like Idai, or even two like Idai and Kenneth. The statistical size of the sample is just too small," she said. "But one thing is sure: The vulnerability of coastal areas will become worse with the sea-level rise induced by global warming." Inland areas, too, are at risk because storms are getting wetter. Kenneth, which has weakened to a tropical depression, is expected to bring heavy rainfall to already saturated soil and dams at the end of the rainy season. "While attention is often given to wind speed, we know from experience that it is rainfall - and subsequent flooding and landslides - that can be even more dangerous from a humanitarian perspective," said Antonio Carabante, an emergency relief delegate with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "This was certainly the case for Cyclone Idai," Carabante said, adding that many affected areas are prone to flooding and landslides even with normal levels of rainfall. "And this is far from a normal situation."

Such conditions can be particularly devastating for developing countries like Mozambique and neighboring Malawi and Zimbabwe, all hit by Cyclone Idai, where food stores can be quickly depleted in a disaster and the health care system struggles to cope with a sudden disease outbreak like cholera. "Cyclone Kenneth may require a major new humanitarian operation at the same time that the ongoing Cyclone Idai response targeting 3 million people in three countries remains critically underfunded," said the UN's emergency relief coordinator, Mark Lowcock, who described the situation as a "climate-related disaster." Abubakr Salih Babiker, a meteorologist at the East Africa-based Intergovernmental Authority on Development, said there are indications that tropical cyclones are becoming more common in the Indian Ocean as rising sea surface temperatures provide the conditions necessary for a storm to form. "There's a pattern here," he said. "What used to be rare is not rare anymore. Climate is changing and we really need to do something about it." Nullis said the agency is sending an expert delegation to Mozambique to discuss with the government how to improve its resilience to extreme weather. Long and narrow with a 2400-kilometre Indian Ocean coastline, the country is one of the world's most vulnerable to global warming.

AP