English: Tropical Cyclone Faraji became the first Category 5 storm of 2021 on February 8.

Not long after attaining peak wind speed on February 8, the storm encountered less favorable conditions and began to weaken. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of Tropical Cyclone Faraji on February 12, maximum sustained winds had dropped to about 81 mph (130 km/h) which is the equivalent of a Category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. At that time, the storm ha a cloud-filled eye and had lost the typical apostrophe-shape typical of a strong cyclone.

As of 4:00 p.m. EST (2100 UTC) on February 12, Tropical Cyclone Faraji’s maximum sustained winds had dropped to about 40 mph (64 km/h) with gusts as high as 52 mph (83 km/h). The storm was located over open water about 1,428 miles (2,298 km) east of Port Louis, Mauritius and was tracking westward. Faraji is expected to weaken slowly, with gale-force winds remaining in the southern section of the storm as it encounters increasingly unfavorable conditions. The JTWC expects Tropical Cyclone Faraji to dissipate by the afternoon of February 15.