New Delhi:
A monstrous cyclone that may be among the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal started to bear down on the eastern coast of India on Saturday with heavy rains and high winds.
Indian authorities warned late Saturday morning that the storm, called Cyclone Phailin, would probably make landfall by 6 pm on Saturday near Gopalpur, Odisha, a largely rural area. Indian authorities called Phailin a "very severe cyclonic storm" with sustained winds of 136 mph, with gusts reaching nearly 150 mph.
Some 4,40,000 people have already been evacuated from the path of the storm, M Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, said at a news conference in New Delhi on Saturday afternoon.
The Indian predictions have so far been less alarming than those from US meteorological authorities. Late Friday, the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said that Phailin had sustained winds of 161 mph, with gusts reaching 196 mph - making it similar to a Category 5 hurricane, the most severe. US meteorological authorities have appeared on Indian TV channels and have almost universally sounded more alarmed about the coming storm than their Indian counterparts.
Indian authorities predicted a storm surge of as much as 10 feet, high enough to inundate low-lying areas in the Indian states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, both of which lie southwest of Kolkata. Rainfall is expected to be heavy in some places, with as much as 10 inches of rain falling between Saturday and Monday, according to the India Meteorological Department.
© 2013, The New York Times News Service