Cyclone Fani tore through India’s eastern coast on Friday as a grade 5 storm, lashing beaches with rain and wind gusting up to 205 kilometres per hour and affecting weather as far away as Mount Everest.
The India Meteorological Department said the “extremely severe” cyclone in the Bay of Bengal hit the coastal state of Odisha around 8 a.m., with weather impacted across the Asian subcontinent.
Dust storms were forecast in the desert state of Rajasthan bordering Pakistan; heat waves in the coastal state of Maharashtra on the Arabian Sea; heavy rain in the northeastern states bordering China; and snowfall in the Himalayas.
Around 1.2 million people were evacuated from low-lying areas of Odisha and moved to nearly 4,000 shelters, according to India’s National Disaster Response Force. Indian officials put the navy, air force, army and coast guard on high alert. Odisha Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi said the evacuation effort was unprecedented in India.
By Friday afternoon, Fani had weakened to a “very severe” storm as it moved north-northeast toward the Indian state of West Bengal.
In Bhubaneswar, a city in Odisha famous for an 11th-century Hindu temple, palm trees whipped back and forth like mops across skies made opaque by gusts of rain.
The national highway to Puri, a popular tourist beach city with other significant Hindu antiquities, was littered with fallen trees and electricity poles, making it impassable. A special train ran Thursday to evacuate tourists from the city.
WATCH: Mass evacuation may have averted catastrophe after cyclone Fani hits India, Bangladesh
The airport in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, closed from 3 p.m. Friday to Saturday morning. At least 200 trains were cancelled across India.
The National Disaster Response Force dispatched 54 rescue and relief teams of doctors, engineers and deep-sea divers to flood-prone areas along the coast and as far afield as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a group of islands that comprise a state located about 1,300 kilometres east of mainland India in the Bay of Bengal.
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On Mount Everest, some mountaineers and Sherpa guides were descending to lower camps as weather worsened at higher elevations. The government issued a warning saying that heavy snowfall was expected in the higher mountain areas with rain and storms lower down the mountain, and asked trekking agencies to take tourists to safety.
Hundreds of climbers, their guides, cooks and porters huddled at the Everest base camp, according to Pemba Sherpa of the Xtreme Climbers Trek, who said weather and visibility was poor. May is the best month to climb the 8,850-foot (29,035-foot) Everest when Nepal experiences a few windows of good weather to scale the peak.
“It is still the beginning of the month, so there is no reason for climbers to worry” that weather from the cyclone will cost them their chance to reach the summit, Sherpa said.
On India’s cyclone scale, Fani is the second-most severe, equivalent to a Category 3 hurricane.
Its timing is unusual, according to data from the Meteorological Department. Most extremely severe cyclones hit India’s east coast in the post-monsoon season. Over roughly half a century, 23, or nearly 60% of the cyclones, to hit India were observed between October and December.
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Because Fani spent 10 days gathering strength over the sea, it delivered a huge blow when it made landfall.
Some of the deadliest tropical cyclones on record have occurred in the Bay of Bengal. A 1999 “super” cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha. Due to improved forecasts and better co-ordinated disaster management, the death toll from Cyclone Phailin – an equally intense storm that hit in 2013 – were less than 50, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
The 1999 super cyclone reached wind speeds of 260-280 kph (161-173 mph)r, said India Meteorological Department scientist Dr. M. Mohapatra.
“This is not as bad,” he said.
Sethi, the special commissioner in Odisha, said communications were disrupted in some areas, but no deaths or injuries had been reported.
In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh just south of Odisha, Fani topped electricity poles and uprooted others, leaving them in sharp angles. In the Srikakulam district, where around 20,000 people had been evacuated, thatched-roof houses collapsed and fishing boats left unmoored on beaches had been sliced into shards.
The district experienced wind speeds of 140 kph and received heavy rains but no loss of life or major damage was reported, district collector J. Niwas said.
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department said the storm would reach the southwestern part of Bangladesh by Friday.
Aid agencies warned that the more than 1 million Rohingya from Myanmar living at refugee camps near the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar were at threat. Hillol Sobhan, local communications director for the aid group Care, said it had emergency supplies for the refugees in Cox’s Bazar.
The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority said it suspended operations of all vessels. Authorities also halted activities at Chittagong Seaport, which handles 80% of the country’s overseas trade.
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