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Abstract

In May 2018, after months of drought, Cyclone Sagar formed in the Gulf of Aden between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Reaching a high wind speed of 120 km/hr., the extreme weather event took lives, destroyed homes, and ruined crops in communities across Yemen, Somaliland, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. The westernmost tropical cyclone on record in the North Indian Ocean, Sagar was also the strongest tropical storm ever recorded in Somalia—until Cyclone Gati struck Yemen and the Horn of Africa in November 2020. In October 2021, Cyclone Shaheen entered the Gulf of Oman and made landfall in northern Oman, the first cyclone to do so since 1890. Meanwhile, extreme rainfall in the Horn of Africa caused devastating floods, affecting more than three million people in Sudan in September 2020 and impacting more than 700,000 people in South Sudan by October 2021. This was the worst flooding that the region has seen in 60 years.