After hurtling into the islands of Mayotte on December 14, 2024, Cyclone Chido left behind scenes of devastation. Hurricane-force winds tore roofs off homes, downed utility poles, and uprooted trees in the French territory off the southeast coast of Africa. In many areas, the once-vibrant, green landscape had turned brown.
The change is visible in these satellite images of Mayotte’s main island (Grande Terre). The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 captured the right image on December 30, two weeks after the Category 4-equivalent cyclone made landfall. The left image shows the same area during more typical conditions two months prior to the storm.
Jess Zimmerman, a professor of ecology at the University of Puerto Rico, has studied how hurricanes in the Atlantic basin change tree composition. But tropical cyclones damage vegetation on landforms in other basins too, including the southwest Indian Ocean, pictured here. After reviewing these images, Zimmerman noted that damage to vegetation was especially noticeable on the hillsides just west of the capital city of Mamoudzou.
High winds blow leaves off trees and snap branches, and heavy rain and wind make it easier for trees to be uprooted from wet soils. Trees at high elevations and on steep slopes are more likely to be damaged in storms because they are more exposed to high wind speeds.
Agence France-Presse reported that during Cyclone Chido, a 300-year-old giant baobab in Mayotte collapsed onto a restaurant, and a 3-meter (10-foot) mound of soil now looms where an acacia tree was uprooted by the storm. Banana trees and other crops were destroyed in the storm, according to a humanitarian assessment, putting the island communities’ food supply at risk.
Chido also damaged infrastructure on the islands, including the airport, hospitals, and roads, disrupting access to electricity, water, and communications. The European Commission’s satellite assessment of cyclone aftermath found much of the damaged and destroyed infrastructure on Grande Terre was in the northeast, where the cyclone made landfall.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Emily Cassidy.
