MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Deadly cyclone sweeps south of Brazil.

At least two people are reported dead, five disappeared and hundreds are homeless after a deadly cyclone with winds of up to 150 kilometres per hour swept the southern coast of Brazil just north of Uruguay mid night last Saturday.

The cyclone, described as extra-tropical, began building last Friday 500 kilometres offshore the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, and midnight Saturday swept inland destroying homes, downing trees and electricity and telephone lines plus causing extensive flooding in twenty counties.

The greatest intensity of the cyclone with winds of 150 kilometres and rainstorm lasted until Sunday 02:30 hours with sea waves reaching five meters, reported the Brazilian Civil Defence Office.

A child was killed when a wall of her house collapsed and a driver was squashed by a falling tree as he drove in the middle of the storm. Five crewmembers of a coastal vessel never returned to port and are missing.

"We yet have to reach some of the places worst hit by the cyclone and which remain flooded, so we do not have a definitive picture of the situation", admitted Marcio Alves from the Civil Defence Office.

The cyclone baptized "Catarina" by local meteorologists, had been anticipated by the Hurricane Centre of Miami and described as "category 1" (the mildest out of a Safir scale of five). However it also had some atypical conditions such as an "eye" (like hurricanes) and it moved from the ocean to the coast.

Over a hundred homeless are temporary established in school buildings and midday Sunday several counties were still in the black with no energy given the devastation of electricity lines and hundreds of fallen trees.

Brazilian meteorologists indicated that their Miami counterparts missed when they described "Catarina" as a hurricane, since this could be easily checked by the temperature in the eye of the storm and the gyration of winds.

Anyhow they coincided with Miami that it was a most unusual phenomenon so far south in the Atlantic.