In view of the weather forecast warning of the cyclone ‘Gulab’, several people have been evacuated from the regions of north Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The coastal areas are on alert as the cyclone was expected to make its presence felt during midnight.
However, the cyclone has made landfall in AP and Odisha, as per the latest report of the IMO. ‘Gulab’ will cross the coasts between AP’s Kalingapatnam and Odisha’s Gopalpur in the coming 3 hours, it said, highlighting the need to expedite evacuations.
Cyclone Gulab has made landfall in coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, the weather office tweeted this evening. The cyclone will cross the coasts between Kalingapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Gopalpur in Odisha in the next three hours, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
“The cloud bands have touched coastal regions and thus the landfall process has commenced over north coastal Andhra Pradesh and adjoining south coastal Odisha,” the IMO statement read.
Regions between Gopalpur of Odisha and Kalingapatnam of Andhra Pradesh are likely to be the bearers of the landfall of Gulab, which will witness wind speeds of up to 95 kmph, according to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).
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In the update provided by the IMO in the afternoon, the location of the storm was told to be around 240 km east of Kalingapatnam and 180 km east-southeast of Gopalpur. The cyclone Gulab, which was named by Pakistan, had attained a speed of 18 kmph at the moment and was moving rapidly then.
To tackle the growing situation, Central teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have been deployed in Odisha. While 13 have been posted in Gopalpur, 5 have been set on stations in Andhra Pradesh, the Director General of NDRF, Satya Narayan Pradhan, said.
Odisha has deployed at least 42 teams of the State Disaster Rapid Action Force while 11 more teams of the NDRF have been dispatched to the affected regions. More than 100 firefighters have also been sent.
As a result, transportation facilities and trains scheduled to go through the east coast have been either cancelled, rescheduled or diverted from their original routes. Taken as a precautionary measure to avoid any unfortunate instances, other evacuation processes have also been started.
Seven districts that are expected to be most hit by the cyclone in southern Odisha have been identified and evacuation has begun here. The regions likely to be most severely affected amongst these 7- Ganjam and Gajapati- have been receiving the highest attention of the government. The forces have started evacuating the residents of the area to prevent possible tragedies.
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In light of the same, an official said that the Odisha government has already deployed at least 15 rescue teams in Ganjam alone, with more in Gajapati and other areas identified.
Less than 4 months back, another cyclone ‘Yaas’ had made landfall in Odisha. This makes ‘Gulab’ the second cyclonic storm within only a couple of months, also putting light on the growing man-made stimulations. The IMO fears this cyclone will have similar intensity as ‘Titli’ of 2018. Cyclone Titli was a deadly and destructive tropical storm that led to extremely heavy rains and winds during 11-12 October 2018.
It was caused as a result of high atmospheric moisture and warmer oceanic surface temperatures between Gopalpur and Northern Andhra Pradesh. Due to this, water levels in the Vamasadhara River and Gotta Barrage got raised with breaches to minor Irrigation sources. Several houses were destroyed while villages were inundated with floods everywhere.
