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SALALAH, Oman | Cyclone Mekunu nears Oman's coast, kills 12-year-old girl

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SALALAH, Oman | Cyclone Mekunu nears Oman's coast, kills 12-year-old girl

SALALAH, Oman (AP) — Cyclone Mekunu neared the Arabian Peninsula on Friday as its outer bands dumped heavy rain and bent palm trees in Oman, a sign of the approaching storm’s power after earlier thrashing the Yemeni island of Socotra.

Already at least 40 people, including Yemenis, Indians and Sudanese, were reported missing on Socotra, where flash floods washed away thousands of animals and cut power lines on the isle in the Arabian Sea. Officials feared some may be dead while authorities in Oman confirmed the first death in the cyclone.

The cyclone is expected to make landfall early Saturday near Salalah, Oman’s third-largest city and home to some 200,000 people close to the sultanate’s border with war-ravaged Yemen.

Conditions quickly deteriorated in Salalah after sunrise Friday, with winds and rain beginning to pick up. Strong waves smashed into empty tourist beaches. Many holidaymakers fled the storm Thursday night before Salalah International Airport closed. The Port of Salalah — a key gateway for the country — also closed, its cranes secured against the pounding rain.

Streets quickly emptied across the city. Standing water covered roads and caused at least one car to hydroplane and flip over.

Later, a municipal worker on a massive loader used its bucket to tear into a road median to drain a flooded street, showing how desperate the situation could become.

Omani forecasters warned Salalah and the surrounding area would get at least 200 millimeters (7.87 inches) of rain, over twice the amount of rain this city typically gets in a year. Authorities remained worried about flash flooding in the area’s valleys and potential mudslides down its nearby cloud-shrouded mountains.

A sizable police presence fanned out across Salalah, the hometown of Oman’s longtime ruler Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Many officers rode in Royal Oman Police SUVs with chicken wire over the windows, likely because their other vehicles weren’t tall enough to maneuver through the flood water.

“Of course, for the citizen there is going to be a sense of fear of the consequences that can happen,” said Brig. Gen. Mohsin bin Ahmed al-Abri, the commander of Dhofar governorate’s police. “We have been through a few similar cases and there were losses in properties and also in human life as well. But one has to take precautions and work on that basis.”

The Royal Oman Police later said on Twitter that a 12-year-old girl died after winds from the cyclone threw her against a wall.

As torrential rains poured down, local authorities opened schools to shelter those whose homes are at risk. About 600 people, mostly laborers, huddled at the West Salalah School, some sleeping on mattresses on the floors of classrooms, where math and English lesson posters hung on the walls.

Shahid Kazmi, a worker from Pakistan’s Kashmir region, told The Associated Press that police moved him and others to the school. He acknowledged being a bit scared of the storm but said: “Inshallah, we are safe here.”

India’s Meteorological Department said the storm packed maximum sustained winds of 170-180 kph (105 to 111 mph), gusting up to 200 kph (124 mph). They described the cyclone as “extremely severe.”

“Salalah is expected to experience maximum wind and maximum rainfall and also the maximum storm surge,” said Mrutyunjay Mohapatra of the department.

On Socotra, authorities relocated over 230 families to sturdier buildings and other areas, including those more inland and in the island’s mountains, Yemeni security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Flash floods engulfed Socotra streets, cutting electricity and communication lines, they said. At least 40 people were missing, they added. Some humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates arrived on the island just hours after the cyclone receded.

The officials said heavy rains pummeled Yemen’s easternmost province of al-Mahra, along the nation’s border with Oman.

Socotra Gov. Ramzy Mahrous said one ship sank and two others ran aground in the storm, initially saying authorities believed 17 people were missing.

“We consider them dead,” the governor said.

Yemen’s self-exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi issued a statement ordering troops under his command on the island to help citizens, deliver supplies and reopen roads.

The island, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, has been the focus of a dispute between the UAE and Yemen’s internationally recognized government amid that country’s war after Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

Socotra has a unique ecosystem and is home to rare plants, snails and reptiles that can be found nowhere else on the planet. It is known for its flower-and-fruit bearing dragon blood tree, which resembles an umbrella and gets its name from the dark red sap it secretes.

A cyclone is the same as a hurricane or a typhoon; their names only change because of their location. Hurricanes are spawned east of the international date line. Typhoons develop west of the line and are known as cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Australia.

Powerful cyclones are rare in Oman. Over a roughly 100-year period ending in 1996, only 17 recorded cyclones struck the sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. In 2007, Cyclone Gonu tore through Oman and later even reached Iran, causing $4 billion in damage in Oman alone and killing over 70 people across the Mideast.

The last hurricane-strength storm to strike within 160 kilometers (100 miles) of Salalah came in May 1959, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s archives.

However, that cyclone was categorized as a Category 1 hurricane, meaning it only had winds of up to 152 kph (95 mph).

Mekunu, which means “mullet” in Dhivehi, the language spoken in the Maldives, is on track to potentially be the same strength as a Category 2 hurricane at landfall. It also comes just days after Cyclone Sagar struck Somalia.

By JON GAMBRELL , By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(R.A)

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DGB Grab Bag: Look Out, Mitch Marner, Easter Bunny Larocque, and Everyone Re-Lax

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Artemi Panarin. I don’t fully understand what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure he’s making fun of the Edmonton Oilers so I’m in.

The second star: Brody Marleau. That would be Patrick Marleau’s nine-year-old son. He got to spend his birthday with the Maple Leafs, which was adorable. He’s also apparently working on stealing Mitch Marner’s girlfriend, which is somehow more adorable.

The first star: Guy Boucher’s face. Fun fact: He’s not even reacting to anything in particular here, he’s just been making this face constantly since mid-November.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: Washington’s Evgeny Kuznetsov tried to score with the behind-the-net lacrosse move this week.

A few nights later, Filip Forsberg tried it, too.

The outrage: That move is disrespectful and anyone who tries it should eat an elbow for their troubles.

Is it justified: OK, I’m overselling the outrage here a bit—it’s not like anybody went nuclear on Kuznetsov or Forsberg. But that’s mainly because their moves didn’t work. If either guy had scored, you can bet that plenty of old-school hockey types would have pulled out their soapboxes and pontificated about hot-shot glory boys disrespecting the game and showing up the other side.

And here’s the thing: It’s going to happen. It’s kind of amazing that it hasn’t happened already.

The move has been around for a while; most of us saw it for the first time when Mike Legg scored with it in college back in 1996. But as best we can remember, nobody’s ever scored with it in a meaningful NHL game. Kuznetsov may even have been the first player to try it all. That’s kind of weird, because it’s not like today’s players can’t do it. Many of them weren’t even born yet when Legg pulled it off, and they’ve grown up trying it; Sidney Crosby did it all the way back in junior. Every NHL team has a few guys who can pull the move off reasonably well in practice. Heck, your beer-league team probably has a few guys who claim they can.

But nobody ever does, at least not in the NHL, because it’s one of those things you’re just not supposed to do. When Crosby did it in 2003, he was ripped by Don Cherry and others for showboating, and he hasn’t broken it out since. Plenty of fans still feel like there’s something wrong with the move.

If you’re one of those fans, I’ve got bad news for you: We’re probably a few years away from players doing this all the time. It’s going to be like the between-the-legs shot that nobody ever tried until the 90s. At first, you couldn’t believe what you’d just seen. Within a few years, Marek Malik was doing it in the shootout, and now it’s just a standard play that everyone tries.

The same thing is going to happen with the lacrosse move. (My personal prediction: One of the many guys who can already do it is going to wait for playoff overtime to break it out for real.) When it does, the old school will complain the first few times, but then we’ll get used to it, and the next generation of fans will wonder why there was ever a time when players weren’t supposed to score with moves they knew would work.

If that bothers you, get your complaining in now. In five years, we’ll look back and wonder what the problem was.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Happy Easter weekend. Today’s obscure player is Bunny Larocque.

Larocque, who’s given name was Michel, was a junior star with the Ottawa 67s in the late 60s and early 70s. He was drafted with the sixth overall pick by the Canadiens in 1972—yes, yet another case of the team using a high pick on a goalie they didn’t really need. Unlike poor Ray Martynuik, Larocque at least got to play in Montreal, where he served as Ken Dryden’s backup during the late-70s Habs dynasty and took over as the part-time starter after Dryden retired. He even won the Vezina four times. Granted, that was back when it was awarded automatically to the goalies on the team with the fewest goals against, like the Jennings is today, but saying “four-time Vezina winner” sounds impressive so we’ll go with that.

His run in Montreal came to an end in 1981, when he was traded to Toronto. The Leafs were terrible, but it gave Larocque a chance to finally be the full-time starter, playing a career-high 50 games in 1981-82. He was traded to the Flyers in 1983 and later had a short stint with the Blues. In all, his NHL career lasted 11 seasons and 312 starts. He began a front-office career in junior hockey, but died in 1992 at the age of 40 after a battle with brain cancer.

Although all those Stanley Cups and Vezinas in Montreal were nice, it goes without saying that his true career highlight came as a Maple Leaf. On January 16, 1982, he got to face down Wayne Gretzky on a penalty shot.

Larocque stood on his head that whole night, and the Leafs won 7-1. Meanwhile, the great 1976-79 Habs “dynasty” never beat the Oilers, not even once. You tell me which team was better.

Be It Resolved

Be it resolved that it’s OK to just say the Golden Knights are the best expansion team ever, in any sport.

Really. It’s fine. Honestly, it’s probably not even up for debate. It’s also a great story, one the NHL should be singing it from the rooftops.

And to their credit, the league is trying. But it has run into a problem: The whole concept of an “expansion” team turns out to be a lot murkier than you might think, and that makes comparing the Knights to what’s come before tricky. Sure, teams like the 1998-99 Predators and the 1974-75 Capitals were expansion teams. But what about the 1979 WHA merger? Or the new teams that showed up in the 1920s and 30s? Do the 1991 Sharks even count, since they got to start with half the North Stars roster?

And so the league has had to go through contortions in order to recognize the Golden Knights without leaving anybody out. For a while they kept using the phrase “inaugural season.” More recently, it’s just “first NHL season.”

That clears up the semantics, but it doesn’t really do the Knights justice. It also leads to weird stuff like that tweet having to include teams from the league’s very first season, which hardly makes sense.

And if you try to expand the argument to other pro sports, it goes even more off the rails:

You can see what they’re trying to do, but I’m pretty sure I wrote essays in college that were shorter than that tweet. And let’s be honest, the NBA can say whatever it wants, but the 2002-03 Hornets aren’t an expansion team. Nor are teams that join from other leagues, or that show up in 1923 because some railroad tycoon got together six friends and $100 in cash and was granted an NHL team to play out of his backyard.

The Golden Knights are an expansion team. And they’re the best one ever, in any major sport. It’s fine to just say that.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Sunday is April Fool’s day. The hockey world isn’t much for pranks these days, beyond the beaten-into-the-ground “make the rookie call-up skate a lap by himself” joke and the occasional trying-a-bit-too-hard social-media bit. There was a time when hockey folks were allowed to have a sense of humor, though. We saw it last year when we unearthed an old Buffalo Sabres clip. This year, let’s hear from Dave Taylor and the Los Angeles Kings.

We start off with MSG throwing it to a clip from LA. Our host is longtime Kings play-by-play man Nick Nickson, and he’s sitting with veteran winger Taylor. They’re reminiscing about the very first interview they ever did together, way back in 1977, and Nickson has the clip. This should be fun!

Hey, wait a minute…

Yes, our trip back to 1977 has been accomplished via some special effects, a terrible fake mustache, and a fantastic mullet wig. It’s actually a pretty decent setup, and I’d be willing to bet that at least a few viewers took a minute to catch on to what was happening.

In his first answer, Taylor suggests that the Kings should someday switch over the black-and-silver uniforms like the Raiders. Get it? He’s predicting what happens in the future. I hope you enjoyed that joke, because it’s basically the only one they have for the next four minutes.

They also trip over which city the Raiders are supposed to be playing in, but they just keep rolling. The bit is good, but not “worth trying more than one take” good.

Taylor’s next answer “predicts” that he should play on a line with Marcel Dionne and Charlie Simmer. That would of course be the Triple Crown Line, which turned out to be one of the best of the 1980s. It was also one of the last great lines to get a decent nickname, instead of today’s lazy treatment of taking the first letter of each guy’s name and being done with it. We’re lucky this line didn’t come along today—I’m not sure I could have handled cheering on the STD Line.

Taylor’s next prediction is that the Islanders will be good, at which point Nickson jumps in to wonder if they’ll make an important trade someday. That’s a reference to the infamous Butch Goring deadline deal with the Kings, but to Nickson and Taylor’s credit they don’t come right out and hit you over the head with the punchline. Mainly because they’re saving that for the next question.

Yes, we arrive at the inevitable Wayne Gretzky bit. You knew it was coming. Taylor manages to predict all of Gretzky’s scoring records, at which point Nickson wonders what would happen if Gretzky ever wound up in a big market like Los Angeles. Taylor responds, “We probably still wouldn’t win anything and then end up trading him for Roman Vopat,” but I think that part accidentally got cut.

We mercifully make it to the last question. Nickson wants to know what players do in their spare time. Taylor answers that he likes reading comic books, and as luck would have it happens to be holding one in his hand right then. It’s a Batman comic, and Taylor predicts that someday it could make for a good movie, which is funny because… You know what, I think you get the idea.

I think we can agree that this whole bit isn’t exactly the most subtle premise, but there is a neat moment at the very beginning that’s easy to miss. Go back to Taylor’s first answer at the one-minute mark, and note how he stutters through the first few words. As a real rookie back in 1977, Taylor had a speech impediment, and often avoided doing interviews. He worked on it over the years to the point where it was rarely noticeable, but he sure seems to slip in an intentional reference to it here. I thought that was cool.

We close with Nickson pointing out the few things “rookie” Taylor failed to predict, and Taylor responding that he wasn’t asked about those. They then pull off the “fake laugh and look at the camera” moment that ended each episode of every 1980s sitcom, and we’re done.

In case you’re wondering, this YouTube clip doesn’t mention the date that it originally aired, but I think we can piece it together. We know it was during Taylor’s career but after the Gretzky trade, that it was a game against the Rangers in New York, and that the two teams were tied 1-1 after one period. That leaves two possibilities, one from 1993 and the other from 1990. I think we can safely go with the latter, since the Batman movie came out in 1989. So that means this aired on March 12, 1990, which isn’t quite April Fools territory but is close enough. Don’t say you never get any investigative journalism out of this column.

By the way, Taylor ended up scoring a goal in a Kings’ win that night. Who could have predicted that?

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you’d like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.

DGB Grab Bag: Look Out, Mitch Marner, Easter Bunny Larocque, and Everyone Re-Lax syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com