After killing hundreds and displacing thousands as it barrelled through Mozambique and Malawi, twice, Cyclone Freddy has dissipated over land, although flooding remains a threat in both countries, a regional monitoring centre has said.
The cyclone has killed at least 225 people in Malawi's southern region — including Blantyre, the country's financial hub — according to local authorities. Another 88,000 people have been displaced.
In neighbouring Mozambique, officials said at least 21 people had died since the storm made landfall in the port town of Quelimane on Saturday night.
More than 45,000 people are still holed-up in shelters, with about 1,300 square kilometres still under water, according to the EU's Copernicus satellite system.
"It's very devastating, especially looking at apartments that [housed] a family of five people, all of them gone," UNICEF's communications specialist in Malawi, Shorai Nyambalo, said.
Speaking to ABC's RN Breakfast, Ms Nyambalo described the scene of mass funerals for those who died.
"It was a very pathetic situation, seeing maybe all the families — the coffins lined up of a whole family," she said.
"In other cases, you would find five coffins and only one person remaining. People are just so confused."
She said that, in some cases, whole villages were washed away without a trace.
Ms Nyambalo said "health essentials" were not available, because most of the roads were destroyed.
"When you look at all these children, they don't have food, they don't have bedding … they're just lacking everything, even protection."
Although the government was prepared and public warnings were issued, Ms Nyambalo said: "It just blew out of hand."
"I think we never saw it coming to this extent," she said.
"We're just hoping that, maybe, we'll wake up tomorrow and the situation will change but, currently, the situation is still not very stable."
Doctors Without Borders' emergency project coordinator in Blantyre, Guilherme Botelho, said there were many wounded, missing and dead and "the numbers will only increase in the coming days".
Malawi — which has been battling a cholera outbreak — is at risk of a resurgence of the disease, Mr Botelho said, "especially since the vaccine coverage in Blantyre is very poor".
The aid organisation has suspended its outreach programs to protect its staff against flash floods and landslides, but is supporting cyclone relief efforts at a local hospital.
Emergency not over yet
Freddy was initially projected to exit back to the sea on Wednesday but has since waned and is no longer classed as a tropical cyclone, the United Nations' weather monitoring centre in Réunion said.
However, even with the cyclone having dissipated, "the emergency will not be over for many communities as rain from upland areas continues to flood downstream areas over the coming days", aid organisation Concern Worldwide' country director for Malawi, Lucy Mwangi, said.
"Even rich countries that are advanced democracies would have been no match for the level of destruction this cyclone has brought," University of California Riverside political scientist Kim Yi Dionne.
Freddy accumulated more energy over its journey across the Indian Ocean than an entire US hurricane season.
Ms Yi Dionne said that the scale of damage was despite Malawi's disaster agency having prepared and planned "for the challenges that come with our contemporary climate crisis".
Scientists said climate change caused by mostly industrialised nations pumping greenhouse gases into the air has worsened cyclone activity, making them more intense and more frequent.
The recently ended La Niña — which impacts weather worldwide — also increased cyclone activity in the region.
African nations — who only contribute about 4 per cent of planet-warming emissions — are "once again paying the steepest price to climate change, including [with] their own lives," Oxfam's southern Africa humanitarian program leader, Lynn Chiripamberi, said.
Cyclone Freddy has caused destruction in southern Africa since late February, pummelling Mozambique as well as the islands of Madagascar and Réunion last month.
"Freddy is quite an exceptional weather phenomenon," World Meteorological Organization tropical cyclone scientific officer Anne-Claire Fontan said.
Its longevity, distance covered, the number of times it has intensified and the amount of energy it accumulated over time have been extraordinary, she said.
Freddy first developed near Australia in early February.
The UN's weather agency has convened an expert panel to determine whether it has broken the record for the longest-ever cyclone in recorded history, which was previously set by 31-day Hurricane John in 1994.
