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On March 13, 2025, Tropical Cyclone Jude was spinning towards landfall on southwestern Madagascar after leaving a track of flooding and destruction in Mozambique, Malawi, and northern Madagascar. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image of the storm on that same day.
Tropical Cyclone Jude formed from a tropical depression located in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar on March 7, 2025. The system strengthened as it moved southwestwardly and clipped the northern tip of Madagascar on March 7-8, when maximum sustained winds were reported near 30 miles per hour (48 km/h).
On March 10, maximum sustained winds had peaked at 90 mph(145 km/h)—the equivalent of a strong Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale—shortly before it made landfall in Nampula Province, Mozambique, bringing severe flooding to the region. Jude then made a sling-shot path, reaching inland as far as Malawi before turning to emerge over the Mozambique Channel on March 12. It is forecast to strike southwestern Madagascar between March 14 and 15, according to ReliefWeb.
Jude is the third cyclone to drench Mozambique in less than three months, following Tropical Cyclones Chido and Dikeledi. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the two previous cyclones had left nearly 700,000 in need of humanitarian assistance prior to the approach of Jude.
On March 13, ReliefWeb published a preliminary report from the National Institute for Disaster Management (INGD) that stated that Tropical Cyclone Jude affected 100,410 people had been affected in Mozambique. Nine people were killed and 20 were injured while more than 20,000 houses, 28 health centers, and 59 schools were damaged or destroyed by the storm. Media have reported that two people were injured as Jude passed over Malawi, with 3,500 people affected and 1,421 displaced.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Terra
Date Acquired: 3/13/2025
Resolutions:
1km (628.4 KB), 500m (2 MB), 250m (5.8 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC