Heavy rain and gusty winds lashed India’s southern coast as Cyclone Montha started to make landfall on Tuesday (Oct 28), officials said, disrupting flights and triggering waterlogging in low-lying areas.

Cyclones, the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the northwestern Pacific, are a regular and deadly menace in the northern Indian Ocean.

“Latest observations indicate that the landfall process has commenced,” India’s national weather bureau said in a statement.

It said Montha would cross the coast of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh over several hours as a “severe cyclonic storm”, with a maximum sustained wind speed of 90-100 kilometres per hour.

Nara Lokesh, a minister in the state government, said that some four million people may be affected.

Local media reported that heavy rain earlier in the day flooded some areas in Andhra Pradesh’s coastal districts, and resulted in the cancellation of more than 30 flights.

Schools in numerous districts were ordered shut and fishing activities suspended until Wednesday.

The Hindu newspaper, citing preliminary state government assessments, reported that there had been “widespread crop loss and economic distress” in certain paddy-growing regions.

Tens of thousands of residents were evacuated on Monday from low-lying coastal areas as the cyclone approached, local police in Andhra Pradesh said.

Authorities have set up mobile hospitals and some 2,000 relief camps, Lokesh, the state minister, said in a social media post.

As many as four million people across 19 districts “are in the vulnerable zone and it’s our priority to ensure minimum inconvenience to them”, he said.

Last year, Cyclone Remal killed at least 48 people in India and at least 17 in neighbouring Bangladesh.

While better forecasting and more effective evacuation plans have reduced death tolls, scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.

Source: AFP

--Agencies