Cyclone Arnab hits India's east coast as 100,000 evacuated
Cyclone Arnab has made landfall in Andhra Pradesh with winds up to 150 kph, forcing nearly 100,000 people from their homes in two Indian states.
Visakhapatnam — Cyclone Arnab made landfall on India's southeastern coast on Wednesday, lashing Andhra Pradesh with ferocious winds and torrential rain and forcing nearly 100,000 people to evacuate their homes across two states, authorities said.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) classified Arnab as a "very severe cyclonic storm", with winds of 125-135 kilometres per hour and gusts reaching 150 kph. The storm struck the coast between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam and was "continuing to interact with the land surface", the IMD said in a statement.
Evacuation figures released by the authorities give a sense of the scale of the response. As many as 50,000 people were told to move to safe areas in Andhra Pradesh, and 48,000 in Odisha, Euronews reported. The state's disaster management authority said more than 12 million people live along the cyclone's expected path.
"Protecting every life is our foremost priority," Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu said as the storm approached the coast.
Authorities set up over 2,000 cyclone shelters across 20 districts and sent emergency alerts to the mobile phones of millions of residents, said Prakhar Jain, head of the Andhra Pradesh state disaster management authority. More than 30,000 fishing boats were secured along the coast, and nearly 1,100 medical teams were deployed to affected areas, he added. The weather bureau warned of "total destruction" of thatched houses, localised flooding, the uprooting of power and communications poles, and "widespread damage" to standing crops.
The warnings extended beyond India: neighbouring Sri Lanka and Nepal also issued weather alerts as the system moved through the region. The Bay of Bengal is one of the world's most cyclone-prone basins, and India's eastern seaboard has repeatedly borne the brunt of severe storms, making evacuation capacity and early-warning networks central to the country's disaster planning.
The immediate test is what the coming hours reveal. The IMD's next bulletins will track how quickly Arnab weakens over land, while damage assessments from the 20 shelter districts — particularly on crops, housing and power infrastructure — will show whether the mass evacuation blunted the storm's impact. No casualty figures had been reported in the sources as landfall continued.
Sources
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