Last month, Kenya’s President William Ruto announced that the El Niño climate phenomenon, which has historically brought devastating flooding to the country, would not occur this year, contradicting weeks of warnings from meteorologists. Today, across the country, at least 60 people have died, over 50,000 more have been displaced, and 221 acres of farmland are under water as heavy rains associated with El Niño lash the region. The impact has been acutely felt in the northeast, where entire towns have been submerged. And it could be even worse in neighboring Somalia, where nearly 1.2 million people have been affected, prompting the country to declare an emergency and the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, to release $25 million to help it prepare for worse to come. The World Meteorological Organization predicts that this El Niño will last until at least April 2024, and the Food and Agriculture Organization in Somalia is projecting a once-in-a-century magnitude flood event.
From The New Humanitarian, Nov. 10. With update, Nov. 24.
See our last report on this year’s El Niño system, and the growing extreme weather phenomenon.
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