India’s east coast is getting ready for its first real cyclone of the season. IMD’s warning that this Bay of Bengal system could turn into a very severe cyclonic storm by the time it actually hits land.
IMD says the system should organize into Cyclonic Storm Arnab by October 26, then keep strengthening as it moves toward shore. Landfall’s expected between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, sometime in the forenoon on October 28.
The numbers here are no joke. Sustained winds at landfall are projected at 115 to 125 kmph, gusting up to 140 kmph, strong enough to knock down weak structures, uproot trees, and take out power lines along the coast. IMD Bhubaneswar director Manorama Mohanty said Odisha specifically should brace for serious rain and wind as the system gets closer.
Odisha’s put out red warnings for five districts, Rayagada, Koraput, Malkangiri, Gajapati and Ganjam, which is about as high as the alert level goes for incoming weather there. Schools and Anganwadi centers in those districts are shut on October 28 and 29 as a precaution.
IMD’s also forecasting heavy to very heavy rain across Odisha between October 27 and 29, and there’s a yellow alert active along the Andhra Pradesh and south Odisha coastlines. It’s not staying contained to just those two states, either. Tamil Nadu and Puducherry ports have raised warning signals, and forecasters are saying Kerala and Tamil Nadu could see heavy rain from the outer bands even without a direct hit.
Prep work’s already moving fast across the likely impact zone. Odisha’s government has sent out disaster teams and started setting up shelters, and fire and emergency services have reportedly put hundreds of response teams on standby with heavy equipment ready to go. Andhra Pradesh’s power distribution authority has 12 coastal districts on high alert too, trying to get ahead of outages before the winds actually show up.
At the national level, the PM’s office has told relevant departments to coordinate cyclone and flood relief, including getting shelters ready ahead of landfall. Odisha officials have said flat out they’re aiming for zero casualties this time, which says something about the lessons learned from past cyclones that hit this same coastline with a lot less warning than this one’s giving.
If “Arnab” sounds familiar, you’re not imagining things, but it’s not quite the same storm. Late last month, a weaker system crossed the Andhra-Odisha coast near Kalingapatnam and got informally called “Arnab” in some early coverage. That one never actually got officially classified as a cyclonic storm though, it stayed a deep depression the whole time, winds well below cyclone strength.
This week’s system is a different animal. Arnab is next up on the North Indian Ocean’s official cyclone name list, submitted by Bangladesh, and this time forecasters actually expect the system to earn that name for real, likely as a “very severe” cyclone, before it reaches land.
With landfall still a few days away, some of this, exact spot, wind speed, timing, could still shift a bit as IMD keeps tracking it. For anyone in the likely path, the advice from officials has stayed consistent: follow local evacuation orders if they come, stay away from coastal and low-lying areas as it gets closer, and check updates from IMD and state disaster teams rather than random forecasts online, since Bay of Bengal systems can still shift course or intensity in that final 48-hour stretch before landfall.
