The Visakhapatnam Cyclone Warning Centre has already issued an alert for the state's fishermen. It has asked those who are already at sea to return and has urged others not to venture out. The centre said that the sea will be rough from Thursday and strong winds will blow along and off the coast.
Currently, the storm is drifting in the west-northwest direction, but is expected to start moving westwards and then re-curve west-southwestwards by late Wednesday or early Thursday. Apart from Andhra Pradesh, heavy rain is likely to lash several parts of West Bengal, including Kolkata, and coastal Odisha on Thursday. “The system is very likely to slightly intensify further during next 24 hours. It is most likely to move west-southwestwards towards west-central Bay of Bengal during next 72 hours,” said the Indian Meteorological Department.
Earlier, it was predicted that the storm will make landfall along the Odisha coast. On Monday, the Bhubaneshwar Met office issued a warning signal at all ports and advised fishermen against venturing too far into the sea. The state government had also asked people to not panic and assured them that they were fully prepared to deal with any kind of eventuality. However, now Odisha is likely to witness light to moderate rainfall, reported Skymet Weather. But the government has kept National Disaster Response Force and Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force on standby mode.
According to Skymet Weather, this is the first cyclone of the season to develop in the Bay of Bengal. The places that are on high alert are Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam, Puri, Gajapati, Ganjam, Gopalpur, and East Godavari.
In October 2014, storm HudHud had hit the coast in Visakhapatnam and killed 49 people. Around 21 lakh families in the state were affected by the storm.
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