The first hurricane ever to hit Yemen in recorded history arrived early Tuesday morning when Tropical Cyclone Chapala hit the city of Mukallah, bringing with it unprecedented flooding in an area already suffering from a war-related humanitarian crisis.

The storm may have already dumped a decades' worth of rainfall in some parts of this arid nation.

As the rare and intense storm moved closer to the mainland the day before, it killed one person and injured nine on the remote Yemeni island of Socotra.

The storm was predicted to bring catastrophic amounts of rain to the area — it could end up being a decade's worth of rain — at least 20 inches — over the course of just a day or two in an area that typically receives just 2 inches of rain annually.

According to freelance reporter Iona Craig, who is in Yemen, the Ministry of Fisheries has released preliminary figures from coastal Hadhramaut, where the storm made landfall, reporting 25 injured, 21 missing, and more than 50 homes destroyed.

Mukalla has a manmade canal that runs into the heart of the city, which has turned into a raging river due to the heavy rains, Craig wrote in a Twitter message exchange with Mashable.

Storm recovery there will be challenging because the city is under the control of militant groups. "There is no state in Mukalla, Craig wrote.

"There's was basically no preparedness," Craig wrote. "Al-Qaeda posted pictures in the hours before landfall of a team of rescue vehicles," she wrote. "In practice those won't heave been much help in floods."

A sight not seen b4, since none in satellite era: landfall of trop cyclone this strong this part of #Yemen #Chapala pic.twitter.com/feBnpDZzfs — Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) November 2, 2015

Aid organizations have not yet been able to access Mukallah, according to Paul Critchley, Mercy Corps’ Yemen Country Director, who spoke with Mashable by phone from Jordan. He said his staff and people from other organizations are waiting in Aden to be able to travel to Mukallah and determine what assistance is needed.

“Whilst we’re preparing to provide food and nonfood items, we desperately need to get in there to do a needs assessment to determine what the needs are and what we are able to do as quickly as possible,” Critchley said.

He said the lack of precedent for a storm of this magnitude hitting Yemen makes the situation especially precarious.

“They have no records of cyclones hitting Yemen… this is gonna be on top of everything else the people are facing, this is a danger that is very new and different to them, with all the fears that go with that.”

Worst-case scenario

The storm followed the worst possible path for the city of Mukallah, passing about 25 miles southwest of the city. This put the city in the storm's most dangerous right front quadrant, where the onshore winds and storm surge were maximized and the air flow was directed up against the east-west oriented mountains located just inland from the city.

Satellite-estimated rainfall totals from Tropical Cyclone Chapala. Image: NASA

This helped enhance rainfall amounts in the higher elevations, though official observations are few and far between, considering that the country has just 7 weather observing stations nationwide, and these have not been reporting consistently.

Satellite img as (recorded) weather history is made: 85mph landfalling hurricane in Yemen, with Cyclone #Chapala pic.twitter.com/gAahYKfnkn — Andrew Freedman (@afreedma) November 3, 2015

Wider view of where video in PT was taken in Mukalla. #Chapala pic.twitter.com/PXcfnzCbAy — Iona Craig أيونا (@ionacraig) November 3, 2015

Photos and videos from Yemen over the past 24 hours show the high tides, flash flooding and mudslides in coastal areas. Mukallah is a city of about 300,000.

A photo posted by sumaia (@sumai_a) on Nov 2, 2015 at 5:50am PST

This photo taken by astronaut Scott Kelly, who's currently living on the International Space Station, shows the storm from space as it spun over the Arabian Sea.

Image: NASA/Scott Kelly

This satellite image captured by NOAA on Saturday, Oct. 30, 2015 shows Tropical Cyclone Chapala, it nears the Arabian peninsula. Image: NOAA/Associated Press

مقطع رقم 3 الاثنين 2/11/2015ارتفاع امواج بحر المكلا حضرموتيارب لطفك ورضاك عنا #شابالا#تشابلوا#تشابالاتصويري Posted by ‎اشرف النهدي‎ on Sunday, 1 November 2015

Impoverished Yemen has been torn apart by a complicated civil war that involves outside regional powers, including Saudi Arabia, making this storm even more catastrophic for the vulnerable country. The unrest makes responding to this disaster far more complicated since few aid groups are operating in the nation because of the security risks.

"Chapala couldn't have come at a worse time," Craig told Mashable. "After seven months of war, infrastructure [has been] destroyed and emergency services [are] non-existent."

"Having said all that, if anyone can get through this Yemenis can," she wrote, adding that Yemenis are "amazingly resilient and rarely ever relied on the what has always been a dysfunctional state even before the war."

"They have a very strong sense of community... So everyone will be doing everything they can to help their neighbours," she wrote.

Why this storm was such an outlier

The storm has taken advantage of all-time record warm water temperatures in the Arabian Sea, which has been caused by a mixture of long-term global warming, a natural climate cyclone known as the Indian Ocean Dipole and the influence of El Niño. The Arabian Sea typically sees about one or two tropical cyclones per year, but rarely do they reach Category 3, 4 or 5 intensity — and rarer still do they eventually make landfall in Yemen.

A recent study showed that global warming may increase the chances of intense tropical cyclones in parts of the Arabian Sea and other areas that don't typically see them today, including the international air transport hub of Dubai.

Surface average temperature anomalies showing record warm ocean temperatures where Cyclone Chapala formed (blue arrow).

Typically, tropical cyclones dissipate before hitting Yemen, after ingesting a gulp of hot, dry desert air that chokes off their thunderstorm activity. In addition, ocean temperatures tend to cool closer to the coast, which also helps weaken such storms.

Even weak tropical cyclones have a record of causing significant damage in Yemen, however, largely from the combined effects of the storm and political, social and environmental stress already present in the country.

For example, in October 2008, a tropical depression caused an estimated $1.6 billion in damage in losses in Yemen, mainly from flooding. These losses amounted to 6% of the country's GDP, according to a World Bank report.

Cyclone Chapala storm has the potential to be the most expensive natural disaster in Yemen's history.

Some information in this story was provided by The Associated Press.