India is likely to break its previous record of being hit by the most number of tropical cyclones in a year, according to private weather forecasting agency Skymet.
Cyclone Bulbul, which is brewing over the Bay of Bengal, is expected to make landfall somewhere along the coast in north Odisha, West Bengal and adjoining Bangladesh by November 9 (Saturday), making it the seventh such system this year.
This will be at par with 2018, when the country was hit by seven cyclones. With a little over 50 days still left for the year to end, it is very likely that in 2019, the number of cyclones hitting India may surpass that of last year, Skymet said.
“The last such development of seven cyclones in a year occurred in 1985 (33 years ago). It included two cyclonic storms, one severe cyclonic storm, three very severe cyclonic storms and one extremely severe cyclonic storm,” Down To Earth quoted a RSMCTC report.
Notably, the previous cyclone over the Bay of Bengal was Cyclone Fani, which struck Odisha on May 3. It was the strongest tropical cyclone to have hit the state since 1999.
Recently, Down To Earth reported, “The severe cyclone frequency in the north Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea) has registered about a three-fold increase during the past decades. As compared to the previous decades, when about one severe cyclone was expected to form every year during the intense cyclonic period — May, October and November — the number has now gone up to about three per year.”
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