Donna is the most powerful May storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere

Donna is the most powerful May storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere

Doyle Rice , USA TODAY Published 2:10 p.m. ET May 8, 2017 | Updated 3:46 p.m. ET May 8, 2017

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(Photo: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response.)
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Tropical Cyclone Donna, packing 120-mph winds, is bearing down on the French territory of New Caledonia in the south Pacific.

On Sunday, as its winds soared to 130 mph, Donna became the most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere in the month of May, according to Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach.

As of midday Monday U.S. time, the storm was the equivalent of a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale and was moving to the southeast at 9 mph. Tropical cyclones are the same types of storms as hurricanes or typhoons.

By Tuesday into Wednesday, local time, the center of Donna should pass near New Caledonia, bringing flooding rain, possible landslides, coastal flooding and damaging winds, the Weather Channel warned.

Schools in New Caledonia were closed for a public holiday on Monday and would stay shut on Tuesday, Reuters said.

New Caledonia is more than 1,000 miles east of Australia.

Late last week, Donna downed trees and destroyed a church and many homes as it barreled through Vanuatu's far northern province of Torba, World Vision reported.

Donna will never again be the name of a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean as it was retired from use following Hurricane Donna's violent rampage up the U.S. East Coast in 1960.

Storms in oceans and seas around the world all use separate lists of names.