Cyclone Yaas landfall at Odisha, West Bengal coasts likely by May 26: Indian Met

The low pressure over east central Bay of Bengal today gathered strength, turning into a deep depression that is very likely to become severe cyclonic storm Yaas by May 25 and cross the Odisha-West Bengal coasts between Paradip and Sagar islands by the next evening, the Indian Met department said.

Under the influence of Yaas, extremely heavy rains will pound coastal areas of Odisha and in Jhargram, Medinipur, North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Kolkata on May 26, it said based on the latest satellite images tracking the movement of the cyclone.

The forecast is for heavy to very heavy rainfall in West Bengal's Nadia, Bardhaman, Bankura, Purulia, Birbhum and heavy falls at isolated places in Murshidabad, Malda and Dakshin Dinajpur districts on May 26 and extremely heavy rains in parts of Malda and Darjeeling.

Yaas is very likely to reach wind speeds between 65 km and 75 km per hour gusting up to 85 km per hour over major parts of central Bay of Bengal from the morning of May 24 for the following 12 hours and would decrease gradually thereafter.

Squally wind speed reaching 40-50 kmph and gusting up to 60 kmph is very likely to prevail over Odisha, West Bengal and Bangladesh coasts from May 24 evening and it would increase gradually to 50-60 kmph going up to 70 kmph from May 25 evening.

The cyclone will pack wind speeds of 60-70 kmph, gusting up to 80 kmph from May 26 early morning along and off West Bengal and adjoining north Odisha and Bangladesh coasts before gradually becoming stronger with 90-100 kmph gusting up to 110 kmph from May 26 morning and increase thereafter till evening of that day.

For the second day today, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over a high-level meeting to review the preparedness of the states and central government ministries and agencies concerned to deal with the situation arising out of Cyclone Yaas.

Modi directed the officers to ensure timely evacuation of those involved in off-shore activities and minimising the time of outages of power and telephone networks in cyclone-hit areas.