Cyclone Dana lashes Odisha

The severe cyclonic storm Dana early today slammed into Bhitarkanika and Dhamra coasts of the eastern Indian state of Odisha where authorities evacuated a million people to safety, shut schools, and suspended flight and train operations.

The landfall process of the cyclone with a wind speed of 110km per hour was expected to continue for several hours, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

Around 12:30am (local time), the storm moved north-northwest at a speed of 15kmh over the past six hours before making landfall between Bhitarkanika in Kendrapara district and Dhamra in Bhadrak district, a senior IMD official said.

"The landfall started with the entry of the outer cloud mass of the system. When the centre of the system reaches land, the wind speed is expected to reach 120 kmph," Umashankar Das, a senior scientist at the Regional Meteorological Centre in Bhubaneswar, said.

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The landfall process will last for nearly five hours, Das added.

The IMD issued a "red warning" for heavy to very heavy rainfall in seven districts of Odisha Mayurbhanj, Cuttack, Jajpur, Balasore, Bhadrak, Kendrapara, and Jagatsinghpur.

Authorities in Odisha and West Bengal cancelled more than 400 trains and suspended flight operations in Bhubaneshwar and Kolkata airports in view of the cyclone.

Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said his government was fully prepared to cope with any situation and took adequate measures to mitigate the cyclone's impact.

Odisha's neighbouring state's West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the administration identified over 3.5 lakh people to be evacuated from low-lying areas of the state in the wake of cyclone Dana.

She said 2,43,374 people have taken shelter in camps.

The Bengal CM said that she would be staying the entire Thursday night at the state secretariat and personally monitor the situation.

Cyclones -- the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the northwestern Pacific -- are a regular and deadly menace in the northern Indian Ocean.

Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world heats up due to climate change driven by burning fossil fuels.

Warmer ocean surfaces release more water vapour, which provides additional energy for storms, strengthening winds.

A warming atmosphere also allows them to hold more water, boosting heavy rainfall.

However, better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced death tolls.

In May, Cyclone Remal killed at least 48 people in India, and at least 17 people in Bangladesh, according to government figures.