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Alocal weather eyes are on Tropical Cyclone Freddy. At the time of writing, four people in Madagascar had died as a result of the storm. Thousands of homes have been destroyed as well.

Freddy reached a category five storm earlier this week, as it skimmed past Mauritius and Réunion Island. Cyclones are rated in this category when they show sustained wind speeds for one minute of over 252 kilometres per hour (km/h). Freddy was hitting 270 km/h.

Although the storm had weakened somewhat after passing over land, it was forecast to pick up intensity as it crossed over the Mozambican Channel. At the time of writing, the very edges of Tropical Cyclone Freddy were forecast to hit the north and north-eastern parts of Eswatini starting later today.

LL

The major impact to our country is expected to come in the form of heavy rain on Sunday.

I have been tracking Tropical Cyclone Freddy using earth.nullschool. net. This website shows not only wind speed and humidity, but it allows the user to look at these factors at different altitudes. Often times you will see high humidity or strong winds higher up in the atmosphere, while on the ground there is not much of either.

Being able to see into the different layers of the atmosphere is key for predicting the direction and likely strength of tropical cyclones.

It allows you to skip ahead in time to see the likely path of the cyclone into the future. For this, what the website does is use modelling, but the models are frequently fed updated satellite information a few times a day, so the models tend to be quite accurate. I encourage you to take a look.

With the clouds only due to start moving in later today, it seems we will have a chance to see the planets in the sky tonight. After sunset you can catch Venus quite low down in the west, shining brilliantly, and Jupiter will be just a little higher up. Even higher up in the sky, but still towards

the west you can see the moon. It is currently 33 per cent illuminated. Speaking of the moon, it was new this past Monday, and the next full moon will fall on March 7. Also, note that we are in line for a partial lunar eclipse on Friday, May 5, in the early evening.

Finally, an update on the speculated Chinese spy balloon that the United Stated used NORAD fighter pilots to shoot it down with a missile a few weeks ago. Well, this looks a little embarrassing. An amateur ballooning hobby group has put out a statement that the spy balloon may in fact just be one of their E200 hobby balloons. It seems one of the groups’ balloons had gone missing, and it was in the same area as the spy balloon that was shot down.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade did say the balloon could be ‘missing in action for other reasons’. They say they are responsible for at least 25 high-altitude balloons, of which eight have flown across the distance of the US, while some have also left the country. Perhaps these are the ‘spy balloons’ that China counter-accused the US of releasing over their air space.

Allegedly, no part of the shot-down balloon has been recovered - with emphasis on ‘allegedly’.