Journalism of Courage
Cyclone Asani by Wednesday noon will touch India’s east coast near coastal Andhra Pradesh and cause extremely heavy rainfall (more than 204mm in 24 hours) in the area. However, it will not make landfall or the process of the cyclone moving completely from the sea over to land.
As per the 5.30 am satellite observations, Asani was located at about 50 km south-southeast of Machilipatnam, 150 km southwest of Kakinada, 290 km southwest of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and 530 km southwest of Gopalpur and 640 km southwest of Puri in Odisha.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a ‘red’ alert over coastal Andhra Pradesh districts of Guntur and Krishna districts indicating very heavy to extremely heavy rainfall (115.5 to 204mm or more in 24 hours) alert while Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Godavari, and Krishna districts have been placed on ‘yellow’ alert on Wednesday.
The storm weakened from a ‘severe’ cyclone to the ‘cyclone’ category during the early hours of Wednesday, the IMD said in its latest bulletin. As the day progresses, Asani is likely to continue to move north-northeast wards along Narsapur, Yanam, Kakinada, Tuni and Visakhapatnam coasts.
“Later during the day, it will slowly recurve sometime between noon and evening hours and emerge into the west-central Bay of Bengal off North Andhra Pradesh coasts by Wednesday night,” the IMD officials said.
Thereafter, by Thursday, Asani will weaken gradually into a depression, the IMD said.
