Category Archives: Réunion

Weather tracker: first red cyclone warning for Réunion since 1989

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Cyclone Belal is expected to remain a strong storm through the coming week

Active weather is expected to affect northern Australia and parts of the Mascarene Islands in the south Indian Ocean this week, with the monsoon trough a triggering factor in both cases.

The monsoon trough is an area of the Intertropical Convergence Zone that interacts with the larger scale monsoon circulation. This trough is marked by an area of relative minima in sea level pressure, as well as a local maximum of vorticity (a measure of the spin of the atmosphere).

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‘Covid cases are up – 6,000 miles from Paris.’ France baffled by UK quarantine change

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Officials say rising Beta variant figures are from Réunion island

The government was embroiled in a rancorous diplomatic standoff with France on Saturday night after its surprise decision to continue imposing a 10-day quarantine on fully vaccinated people returning from the country.

French officials seemed baffled by the move, suspecting UK ministers may have based it on rising cases on the French island of Reunion – nearly 6,000 miles from Paris.

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French Réunion: the postmen of the peaks

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René-Claude and Cyril, the two postmen serving Mafate, French Réunion, walk 90 miles of paths to deliver mail to residents on routes that can last days

The Cirque de Mafate, one of three calderas on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, along with Cilaos and Salazie, is a valley more than 1,000 metres deep surrounded by huge cliffs and steep peaks which, for nearly two centuries, have been home to the descendants of the “maroons”, slaves who fled sugar cane plantations.

The community of 700 Mafatais lives here, almost self-sufficiently, amid palm, banana and filao trees. But there are only two ways to get to the cirque: by foot or by helicopter.

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