Severe Cyclonic Storm Arnab was centred about 300 kilometres from Visakhapatnam on Tuesday morning and is expected to make landfall near Yanam on Wednesday morning with winds of 115 to 125 kilometres per hour, after nearly 50,000 people were moved to shelters.
Severe Cyclonic Storm Arnab accelerated across the west-central Bay of Bengal on Tuesday and is expected to make landfall near Yanam, between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam, by Wednesday morning, bringing dangerous winds and extremely heavy rainfall. The India Meteorological Department and the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority said the storm was centred approximately 300 kilometres from Visakhapatnam, 360 kilometres from Kakinada, 460 kilometres from Machilipatnam and 530 kilometres from Bapatla on Tuesday morning. The department warned the storm is very likely to intensify further into a very severe cyclonic storm at landfall, with sustained winds of 115 to 125 kilometres per hour and gusts up to 140 kilometres per hour.
Nearly 50,000 people had been moved to shelters from vulnerable areas by Monday night, out of 400,000 estimated to need evacuation, Prakhar Jain, managing director of the state disaster management authority, told Reuters, adding that evacuation is continuing. There have been no evacuations in neighbouring Odisha so far, its special relief commissioner, Rajesh Prabhakar Patil, said, although schools and colleges in five districts there have closed for Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 12 trains were cancelled in the east and rail services on 53 routes along the southern coast were suspended for Tuesday and Wednesday.
In neighbouring Nepal, authorities cautioned tourists against venturing into high-altitude areas, fearing the cyclone could trigger torrential downpours, snowstorms and avalanches in the Himalayan region from Thursday night through Saturday. That warning comes as the mountainous country recovers from a deadly flash flood in August that killed about 1,500 people.
This update changes the picture from earlier reporting on the same storm, which covered its formation, its intensification and preparations to evacuate. The new facts are the storm's Tuesday-morning position, the refined landfall point near Yanam and the Wednesday-morning timing, the wind speeds at landfall, and the evacuation count of nearly 50,000 against an estimated 400,000. The position, wind and landfall figures from the weather office and the state authority agree across the wire reporting reviewed, and no conflicting track or intensity forecast was found.
Sixteen districts, encompassing 2,460 revenue villages and 92 urban areas, fall directly in the cyclone's trajectory, according to preliminary assessments, and authorities have readied 1,763 cyclone shelters and 2,907 control rooms with national and state disaster response teams positioned in 11 high-risk districts. The landfall itself on Wednesday morning will confirm the storm's track and intensity and show whether the evacuation, which is still under way, reaches the estimated total.