India’s East Coast Braces For Cyclone As Odisha Puts Every District On Alert

A weather system over the Bay of Bengal is expected to strengthen into a cyclone and come ashore on the morning of 28 October between the northern Andhra Pradesh and southern Odisha coasts, India’s weather office said on Saturday, as Odisha placed all of its districts on alert

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The Indian Meteorological Department said the low-pressure area would deepen through the weekend, becoming a deep depression on Sunday and a cyclonic storm over the west-central Bay of Bengal by Monday morning before moving west-northwest towards the coast. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, the department’s director general, gave the expected landfall window. If it reaches cyclone strength the storm will be named Arnab, a name contributed by Bangladesh.

Odisha’s disaster management minister, Suresh Pujari, said the state was working to a target of no deaths. Collectors in sixteen coastal and southern districts have been told to take precautions and may close schools and colleges in their areas. Leave has been cancelled for government staff in Ganjam, Gajapati, Puri and Khurda. 

Fishermen at sea have been told to return, national and state disaster response teams are on standby, and festival committees in Cuttack have been asked to take down bamboo structures put up for Durga Puja.

A two-day visit to Odisha by President Droupadi Murmu, due to begin on 28 October, has been postponed.

In Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu told officials to prepare and to use the rain to fill reservoirs. The weather office has placed three districts of Telangana — Khammam, Bhadradri Kothagudem and Mulugu — under its highest alert for 28 October. The state is running a rainfall deficit.

Separately, heavy rain has been falling across Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where several districts are under red alert. A bus driver was killed and a conductor injured on Saturday when a mudslide struck their vehicle at Burliar in the Nilgiris hills.