When Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique last week, it left a huge trail of destruction that spread 3, 000 sq km to three countries, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Accompanied by unrelenting floodwaters, after two days, the cyclone made history by being the biggest destructive natural phenomenon to hit southern Africa for more than a generation, leaving close to 1000 people dead in the three countries that stood in its path, according to some estimates.
The devastation was so apocalyptically complete that more than half of the Mozambican city of Beira was destroyed and lay submerged under a rain-fed deluge that has lasted for days and still shows no sign of relenting.
Home to some 28.8 million people, Mozambique suffers from periodic cyclones, droughts, floods, and related natural disasters.
The town of Chimanimani in the east of Zimbabwe and southern Malawi also bore some of the cruelest brunt of the storm, leaving swathes of destruction to infrastructures in its wake.
431 people died, 268 of them in Mozambique, 104 in Zimbabwe, 56 in Malawi, and 1 in Madagascar, according to conservative estimates.
Stunned into inertia in the first few days, the authorities in the three countries said although at a national level efforts were being made to deal with the aftermath, the scale of the recovery effort was simply beyond their capacity to cope and requested for international help.
Mozambique, the country in the eye of the storm, declared a national emergency, three days of national mourning and Beira a natural disaster zone for which resources are being mobilized to reach out to those in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
At least 23,000 homes have been destroyed by the storm as well as 30 health units and several schools in Sofala Province.
Electricity lines from the public grid have been destroyed and communications infrastructure in the region damaged, hindering relief operations.
President Filipe Nyusi told his nation that it should brace itself for more casualties after reports of at least 15, 000 people still desperately trapped on the wrong side of the national and international humanitarian effort.
The National Institute for Disaster Management (INGC) in Mozambique says the country cant cope with the financial muscles required to manage the crisis.
The international humanitarian community have responded with relief organizations and western nations such as the United States, UK and Norway providing hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid to tend to the survivors and help recover the remains of those who died as nature showed its devastating side.
Cyclone Idai emanated from originated from the French island of Reunion on 1 March and swirled west-southwestward, towards the east African coast.
After three days it developed a strong deep convection, moving slowly westward, finally making landfall in Mozambique.
It retained its characteristics as a tropical cyclone throughout this period and turned north into Malawi and eastward into Zimbabwe before ending up on the Mozambique Channel.
Although its severity has waned, the rains which accompanied it are expected to hold on for the next couple of days, making efforts by relief workers to recover the dead and save those still trapped a daunting task.