SALALAH, Oman — Cyclone Mekunu neared the Arabian Peninsula on Friday as its outer bands brought high winds and dumped heavy rain to Oman, killing at least one person before it made landfall.
The cyclone earlier thrashed the Yemeni island of Socotra. 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 island in the Arabian Sea.
Officials feared some of those missing in Yemen may be dead.
Authorities in Oman confirmed the first death in the cyclone, a 12-year-old girl who died after winds from the cyclone caused her to hit a wall.
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 picking 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.
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 about 8 inches of rain, twice the amount the 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.
Police 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, probably because their other vehicles weren’t tall enough to maneuver through the flood water.
As torrential rains fell, 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.
Shahid Kazmi, a worker from Pakistan’s Kashmir region, said 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 105 to 110 miles per hour, gusting up to 124 miles per hour. It described the cyclone as ‘‘extremely severe.’’
On Socotra, authorities relocated more than 230 families to sturdier buildings and other areas, including those more inland and in the island’s mountains.
Flash floods engulfed Socotra streets, cutting electricity and communication lines, they said.
Socotra 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.
Cyclone is the term used for hurricanes that form 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.
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.
