Cyclone Fani may hit Odisha areas May 3

Bhubaneswar: When the IMD officially announced of cyclone Fani re-curving towards Odisha from May 1, the shocker from Indian National Centre of Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) model reveals that the cyclone will actually make landfall between Kalingapatnam and Puri on the evening of May 3.

A close analysis shows the landfall will be on Odisha side and probably near Chattrapur in Ganjam district.

As the cyclonic storm has been categorised as “very severe”, the devastation wrecked recently by very severe cyclonic storm Titli is still fresh in the memory of people in Gajapati and Ganjam.

However, an analysis of INCOIS wind pattern model shows Fani to be drifting along the entire coastal belt in the state, post the landfall.

While IMD has predicted its wind speed on May 3 at around 130 – 140 and gusting up to 150Km/hour, the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) has predicted the wind speed at 185Km/hour and gusting up to 190Km/hour on May 3. Now, it seems Fani will not only bring pounding rain, but wrecking large-scale devastation for the state.

Moreover, if the INCOIS model’s suggestion proved true, then Odisha for the first time in last 40 -years would be witnessing a cyclone making landfall in the month of May.

Odisha have witnessed all – from cyclones to super cyclones – in the month of October.

The climatic fact behind is as cylonic systems are low pressure zones, they tend to move to high pressure zones. Post Monsoon and in the month of October, the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) was higher than the temperature in the landmass. For which, low pressure areas were formed in Bay of Bengal (BoB) and they move towards the high pressure zone in landmasses of Odisha or Andhra Pradesh. In contrast, during summer the temperature over the landmass in Odisha were higher than the SST in BoB.