‘Fani’ an extremely severe cyclone, moved in closer to the Odisha coast on Thursday, lying in wait just 360 km away on a home stretch towards Puri where it would make landfall on Friday afternoon.
The massive storm may have slowed down a bit but is well on course to barrel into the coast between Gopalpur and Chandbali, accompanied by ferocious winds of up to 180 kmh, gusting up to 200 kmh.
It may not weaken by any appreciable margin ahead of this, and would bear down on the coast with near-full force to inundate low-lying areas in Ganjam, Khurda, Puri and Jagatsinghpur districts. On Thursday, it featured a menacing ‘eye’ on the top as seen in satellite pictures. The eye, by itself, is the only peaceful part of the cyclone but the surrounding ‘eye wall’ packs some of the fiercest winds in the system.
The clearer and well-defined the eye, the more dangerous will be the eye wall. The bands that line the ‘eye’ are usually where one can locate the strongest thunderstorms. Several such storms are embedded into the towering structure of the cyclone.
‘Fani’ was expected to have reached peak wind speeds of 190 km/hr gusting to 210 km/hr while riding the warm West-Central Bay of Bengal waters on Thursday. At landfall, these would wind down just a notch to 180 km/hr and 200 km/hr.
High winds & heavy rain
Apart from North Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, Bengal and the adjoining North-Eastern States are also expected to be battered by high winds and heavy rain, although ‘Fani’ would start weakening immediately after landfall.
Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Centre saw a fresh wave of rains over South India by mid-May.
The India Met Department has forecast isolated to scattered rainfall over Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Coastal and South Interior Karnataka next week.