March Storm In Bay Loses Steam, To Cross Myanmar Coast As A Depression This Afternoon

Bhubaneswar: The possible March storm is likely to fizzle out and cross the Myanmar coast as a depression on  Tuesday afternoon, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) informed.

The deep depression over north Andaman Sea and adjoining areas of eastcentral Bay of Bengal lay centered at 5.3 am, about 250 km north-northeast of Mayabundar (Andaman Islands), 300 km southwest of Yangon (Myanmar) and 400 km south of Thandwe (Myanmar), it added.

The IMD had earlier forecast the intensification of the system into a cyclonic storm and that it would cross the Myanmar coast around Thandwe at 12 am on March 23.

Since 1891, according to records available with IMD, five of seven weather systems formed had intensified into cyclonic storms. Of these, only two had hit land while the rest five fizzled out in the ocean. One of them had hit land Tamil Nadu coast in 1925. Earlier in March 1907, a similar storm hit the Sri Lanka coast.