Another sad report!

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One Dead, 3,000 Homeless from Brazil Cyclone

By Andrei Khalip

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - A rare cyclone bringing howling winds and rain to southern Brazil killed at least one person and made more than 3,000 homeless overnight, civil defense officials said on Sunday.


Civil Defense Capt. Marcio Luiz Alves said some 3,000 people in the southern state of Santa Catarina had to abandon their homes damaged or destroyed by winds, rain or waves. In neighboring Rio Grande do Sul state, 150 families were made homeless, state authorities said.


A tree that fell on a moving car killed the driver and seriously injured his wife. A fishing boat sunk off the Santa Catarina coast and its crew of five were missing. At least three other boats were not accounted for and Navy ships were looking for the missing fishermen.


Brazil's official weather service has denied the weather phenomenon is Brazil's first hurricane as U.S. meteorologists said earlier, but officials acknowledged winds were too strong for a common cyclone.


"It was born as an extratropical cyclone that we know, but then it started changing, becoming an atypical and abnormal case," said Gustavo Escobar, a meteorologist with the state Weather Forecasting and Climatic Studies Center.


According to some reports, winds gusted up to 95 mph in some areas of Santa Catarina in the early hours of Sunday, whipping up 16-foot waves.


The wind and rain lashed 20 municipalities in Santa Catarina, Alves said. The authorities had yet to obtain damage assessment from 11 municipalities due to blocked access and broken communications.


"They say it wasn't a hurricane, but the official weather service also had not warned us of anything as strong as that," Alves said.


He said the winds eased after the cyclone hit a mountain range, although the weather service said there may be more strong winds during the day on Sunday.


Alves said an early storm warning allowed civil defense officials to warn residents and many had left the shore area.


On Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (news - web sites) in Miami said the first hurricane ever in the South Atlantic was forming off the coast of Brazil, classifying it as a Category 1 hurricane -- the least powerful on forecasters' five-level scale, with winds between 74 and 95 mph.


Brazil's state weather service said that the eye of a hurricane is hotter than its edges, while the center of the weather system that formed above colder waters in South Atlantic was cold, which meant it was an extratropical cyclone.