AMARAVATI, India — Severe Cyclonic Storm Arnab intensified over the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday as tens of thousands of people were evacuated along India’s eastern coast, train services were cancelled and schools shut, one day before the storm is expected to make landfall in Andhra Pradesh, according to Reuters.
Nearly 50,000 people had been moved to shelters from vulnerable areas by Monday night, out of an estimated 400,000 who need to be evacuated, Prakhar Jain, managing director of the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority, told Reuters. "Evacuation is continuing," Jain said. The India Meteorological Department said the storm, moving at about 25 km/h over the previous six hours, was centred on Tuesday morning about 300 km from Visakhapatnam, 360 km from Kakinada, 460 km from Machilipatnam and 530 km from Bapatla, and was expected to cross the coast near Yanam — between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam — by Wednesday morning.
The weather office warned that Arnab is very likely to intensify further into a very severe cyclonic storm by landfall, with sustained winds of 115–125 km/h gusting to 140 km/h and extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places along the coast, according to the IMD and the state disaster authority, as reported by ANI. Preliminary assessments put 16 districts — encompassing 2,460 revenue villages and 92 urban areas — directly in the storm’s path. Authorities said 1,763 cyclone shelters had been readied and National and State Disaster Response Force teams positioned in 11 high-risk districts, and an orange alert was in force for Visakhapatnam, where light rain had already begun.
In neighbouring Odisha, there had been no evacuations by Tuesday, the state’s Special Relief Commissioner Rajesh Prabhakar Patil told Reuters, but schools and colleges in five districts were 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, regional railway authorities said. Television showed waves crashing on deserted beaches and shuttered shops lining streets in affected areas.
The storm’s reach extends beyond the coast. In Nepal, authorities cautioned tourists against venturing into high-altitude areas, fearing Arnab could trigger torrential downpours, snowstorms and avalanches in the Himalayan region from Thursday night through Saturday, Reuters reported. The warning comes as the mountainous country is still recovering from a deadly flash flood in August that killed about 1,500 people.
Zark News reported on October 26 that evacuations had begun as Arnab approached; Tuesday’s figures show how sharply the operation has since scaled up. Officials say the next 24 hours — the final evacuation push, the storm’s overnight approach and its Wednesday-morning landfall near Yanam — will decide the scale of damage, and they have urged residents of low-lying coastal villages to move to shelters before winds make travel impossible. Read the ANI report carried by Latestly at latestly.com.
