Long-lived tropical cyclone Freddy traversed more than 9,000km across the entire southern Indian Ocean in 17 days, starting on 5 February from the seas north of Australia, making landfall in Madagascar on 21 February.
This long journey makes Freddy one of 5 in known history to set a record for track length in the southern Indian Ocean, noting that Freddy actually formed further east than the previous cyclones.
Tropical cyclone Freddy developed in the Timor Sea, and was reported by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) on 5 February. What followed was a 17-day westward journey through quite favourable atmospheric conditions, conducive to tropical cyclone strengthening and development.
This system underwent a few intensity changes during its travel to the west, and at its strongest was a category 5 equivalent cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of 270km/h, while during significant portions of time it maintained category 3+. On 21 February, at around 16:15 UTC, Freddy made landfall on the southeastern coast of Madagascar.
This whole journey has been captured in three particularly long loops of the IR 10.8µm, the Tropical Airmass RGB and the Enhanced IR 10.8µm, where the development phases can be easily tracked.