‘Amphan Weakens But Still Expected To Make Potentially Catastrophic Landfall’

Bhubaneswar: Super Cyclone Amphan has weakened slightly over the past six hours. However, it is still the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane with wind speed of 220kph, and still expected to make a potentially catastrophic landfall near the border of India and Bangladesh on May 20, Meteorologist Eric Holthaus tweeted on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) had upgraded Amphan to 270kph, the strongest cyclone ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal, surpassing the 1999 Odisha cyclone (260kph). Amphan is a potential catastrophic disaster for West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Burma, it had said.

However unlike the storm in 1999, Amphan took shape of a super cyclone in the sea and would lose some teeth while inching closer to land, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, adding that it would weaken into an extremely severe cyclonic storm by 5.30 pm on Tuesday.

“The super cyclonic storm ‘Amphan’ over westcentral Bay of Bengal moved north-northwestwards with a speed of 14 kmph during past 6 hrs and lay centred at 2.30 am over westcentral Bay of Bengal, about 570 km south of Paradip,” the 5.30 bulletin of IMD said.

Current projections have the centre of the storm with winds, falling to approximately 150kmph gusting to 185kmph, making landfall to the southeast of Kolkata, close to the border with West Bengal and Bangladesh at about 12 pm on Wednesday (May 20). The eye of the storm is likely to pass through Sundarbans.

IMD Director General, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said that Amphan is likely to cross West Bengal -Bangladesh coasts between Digha (West Bengal) and Hatiya Islands (Bangladesh) close to Sundarbans on May 20 afternoon/evening as a very severe cyclonic storm with maximum sustained wind speed of 165-175 kmph gusting to 195 kmph.

In Odisha, Balasore, Bhadrak and Jagatsinghpur will experience heavy rain and squally wind reaching 110-120 kmph.

Mohapatra said that heavy rain will lash north Odisha districts from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning and stop thereafter. “The current wind speed along and off Odisha coast is 40-45 kmph,” he added.