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Cyclone Phailin, the most powerful storm to hit India in more than a decade, waned considerably on Sunday morning, nearly 12 hours after it made landfall at the port town of Gopalpur in Odisha.

Satellite image of Cyclone Phailin as it move northwards post lanfall. (Photo courtesy: IMD)

The weakened system is moving beyond Odisha towards the northwest with a speed of 20km per hour, according to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).

There were reports that three people had died after Phailin struck, but the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Odisha government denied this. Officials clarified eight people had died before Phailin struck, most of them because of falling trees.

"Our teams are out in both Odisha and Andhra Pradesh for rescue and relief operations. So far we have not received any report of casualties anywhere," NDRF chief Krishna Chowdhary told news agency PTI.

Operations to rescue those trapped under the debris are on in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, where more than 3,000 personnel of NDRF have been deployed.

Meanwhile, authorities are struggling to restore power supplies and telecommunication links as the winds snapped thousands of trees and poles, while buildings and some communication towers were destroyed. Before Phailin made landfall on Saturday, power supplies were shut down as a precaution.

The IMD said gale wind speed of 100-110 km per hour would gradually decrease to 80-90 km per hour by noon and further to 50-60 km per hour by Sunday evening over Odisha.

Heavy rains continued to lash more than a 150-km stretch along the coastline. More than a dozen coastal villages have been submerged by the cyclone that was classified as a Category 4 storm on a scale of 1 to 5.

By late Sunday evening, a deep depression is likely cause heavy rainfall over Bihar.

No loss of life was reported from Andhra Pradesh, which was also expected to be hit by the cyclone but mostly escaped its fury.

"Cyclone Phailin is gradually losing intensity, but it is still classified as a severe cyclone," Sharad Sahu, director of the weather department in Odisha.

According to Cyclocane, a cyclone tracking website, said the storm has weakened below warning levels and the storm system is no longer a tropical cyclone.

The remnants of the storm are likely to dump "heavy to very heavy rains" across Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh in the next 24 hours. Parts of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh were also expected to see heavy rainfall.

Authorities in Odisha were assessing the damage that Phailin would have caused overnight before moving inland, but their task was complicated by a prolonged power shutdown and snapping of telephone services in the affected areas.

Eye witness reports said the powerful winds on Saturday snapped trees like matchsticks and swept away rooftops besides flattening paddy crop across a large swathe of farmland. Heavy damage is feared in Odisha's Ganjam district and the coastal stretch between Andhra towns of Kalingapatnam and Ichapuram.

There were also reports of a swollen Chilika - Asia's largest brackish water lake that lies 50 km north of Gopalpur - inundating villages and cutting off many road links in the interior.

The storm, which made landfall early Saturday night near the town of Golpalpur in Orissa state, was expected to cause large-scale power and communications outages and shut down road and rail links, officials said. It's also expected to cause extensive damage to crops.

Odisha's top rescue official said 860,000 people moved before the cyclone made landfall on Saturday evening, while at least another 100,000 were evacuated further south in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Residents were also evacuated from coastal regions of West Bengal.

The government had said on Saturday evening that some 550,000 people had been evacuated but efforts to persuade people to flee to safer areas continued until shortly before Phailin made landfall at around 9pm.

About 6.5 lakh people were evacuated from the storm's path, in what is said to be the biggest peacetime human movement in the country in 23 years. More than 1,700 soldiers besides rescue teams from the navy were kept on standby for emergencies.

News of Phailin has been making headlines since it was formed in the Bay of Bengal earlier this week and churned its way across the high seas, turning into what many feared could be a repeat of the super cyclone of 1999, which killed more than 10,000 people and left behind such destruction that took years to be undone.

But disaster preparations have improved substantially since then. The air force pressed into operation its biggest transport plane, the gigantic C-17, to airlift ambulances and relief material, while helicopters and navy warships were close at hand.

The authorities were forced to release water from the Hirakud and Damodar Valley dams to prevent a breach as the rain pelted down, potentially posing a flooding threat.

Once the extent of damage becomes clear, relief and rehabilitation efforts will get into full swing. The evacuated are crammed into schools and temples, and preventing waterborne diseases will be a major focus.

As Odisha braces for super cyclone Phailin, a coastal village hopes the mangrove it nurtured will protect their homes

Photo by Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava
As Odisha braces for a super cyclone that is likely to make a landfall on Saturday evening, thousands of villagers are being evacuated to shelter homes. Some of them are also leaving behind the mangrove forests which they believe have rescued them from cyclones and storms in the past.
Praharajpur village in coastal Odisha's Kendrapada district is one such village whose residents are leaving their mud houses, but with a hope to come back and lead a normal life. Their hope is the 40 hectare dense lush green patch of mangrove forest that has been protecting this village from each and every cyclone for the last 30 years.
“The super cyclone of 1999 is the worst among all the storms I have seen. Hundreds of people died in the neighbouring villages. We lost only two people, that too because a mud wall collapsed because of severe rains. The powerful sea waves were contained by the island (mangrove),” said Ravindra Behera, a resident of this village. He now hopes that this year also the forest will save them.
It was a research done by a team of scientists from Delhi University and Duke University in 2009 which showed that the villages with wider and more mangroves between them and the coast witnessed considerably fewer deaths than the ones with sparse or no mangroves. However, the villagers of Praharajpur had realized the importance of these trees as a shield against the storms much earlier in 1982 itself.
The village is located on the delta of the Bhadrak river. “Our elders had made an embankment along the coast to prevent soil erosion from the river in 1975. They randomly planted mangrove trees on the embankment. Gradually, this plantation converted into a mangrove forest. However, it was during the 1982 cyclone that we realized that mangrove can also prevent the storm from reaching us,” said Balram Biswal, another resident.
Thereafter, the villagers aggressively started planting mangroves on the island and also made provisions in the village to protect the forests. “We constituted a 15-member forest protection committee from among the villagers. The body penalised anyone who damaged the forests in any possible way and a night guard was appointed and paid Rs 100 per night to protect the mangrove,” said Behera, a resident.
Today, a dense forest of tall mangrove trees stands between the sea and Praharajpur. Apart from a shield from cyclone, the residents also get wood, honey and fruits from the mangrove. “The story of Praharajpur has also inspired the nearby villages to plant and protect mangroves coasts. We hope that the forest comes to their rescue as well,” said Suresh Bisoi of non-profit Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC).
Mangroves thinned out in 60 years
Though the mangrove cover has increased to a certain extent in Odisha in the past 10 years, it is not much as compared to what it was sixty years ago. Total mangrove area in the state fell from 30,766 hectares (ha) to 17,900 ha between 1944 and 1999. As per the Forest Survey of India data, the mangrove cover, however, increased to 22,200 ha in 2011. The Delhi University study also showed that the average width of a forest that stood between the sea and a village across 409 coastal villages in Kendrapara was 1.2 km in 1999, down from 5.1 km in 1944.
“The mangrove cover is still very less in the state as compared to what it was 50 years ago. In the past three decades, the frequency and severity of cyclone has increased significantly and the mangrove cover has continuously decreased. The government should have taken the mangrove plantation drive seriously by now,” said Kailash Dash of RCDC.
As Odisha braces for one of the worst storms, one hopes that maximum number of people will be shielded by these mangroves and might even turn of to be a lesson for the government which is yet to promote mangrove plantation and the protection.

Historically prone to cyclones

26 of the 35 deadliest tropical cyclones in world history have been Bay of Bengal storms

Courtesy NASA
A satellite-based measure of Phailin’s (pronounced 'pie-reen', not 'pie-leen', the Thai word for sapphire) strength is estimated as the storm’s central pressure at 910.7 millibars, with sustained winds of 175 mph (280 kmph). If those numbers were verified by official forecast agencies, they would place Phailin at par with 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, and break the record for the most intense cyclone in Indian Ocean's recorded history, says weather historian Christopher Burt.
India's eastern coast has a long history of devastating cyclones. The worst of these (since 1990) was the “Great Orissa Cyclone of 1999” (Orissa state in north-eastern India is now known as Odisha). This cyclone killed 9,000-10,000 people when it made its landfall on October 19, 1999 with 155 mph winds and a storm surge of 26 feet (8 metre). The storm was classified as a ‘Super Cyclonic Storm’ in the nomenclature of tropical storms that affect the North Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea.
Jeff Masters, hurricane hunter and meteorologist who writes a blog for Weather Underground, says there is good reason to be concerned when a major tropical cyclone forms in the Bay of Bengal.
He says 26 of the 35 deadliest tropical cyclones in world history have been Bay of Bengal storms. During the past two centuries, 42 per cent of Earth's tropical cyclone-associated deaths have occurred in Bangladesh, and 27 per cent have occurred in India.
Phailin compared with 1999 super cyclone
“Phailin is likely to be the strongest tropical cyclone to affect India in fourteen years, since the great 1999 Odisha Cyclone. Although Phailin is expected to hit the same province of India that the great 1999 Odisha Cyclone hit, Phailin's landfall location is predicted to fall about 100 miles (170 km) farther to the south, in a region where the coast is not as low-lying. This should keep the death toll due to storm surge much lower compared to the 1999 Odisha Cyclone, where more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to the storm surge,” he explains.

The latest storm surge forecast from India Meteorological Department predicts a peak surge under 3', but this is much too low, considering Phailin's recent round of rapid intensification. Phailin's heavy rains will be capable of causing great destruction, as did the rains from the 1999 Odisha cyclone. More than 2,000 of the deaths at that time occurred because of fresh water flooding in the town of Padmapur, located more than 150 miles (241 km) from the coast. Deforestation was cited as a contributing cause to these destructive floods that killed 36 per cent of the town's population, Masters explains.
Burt says that details (like barometric pressure and wind speeds) for historic cyclones that have affected India in the past (prior to 1990) are sketchy. The lowest barometric pressure ever measured in the Bay of Bengal was during a severe cyclone in 1833 when the British vessel SS Duke of York reported a pressure of 891mb (26.30”) while passing through the eye of a storm in the bay. As Masters mentioned, the Odisha Cyclone of 1999 bottomed out at 912 mb (26.93”) and was the most intense such to strike India in at least the past 35 years or so (note that Phailin has apparently become even more intense if the 910 mb figure stands). The death toll of the 1999 storm of over 9,000 was the greatest in India since the so-called Devi Taluk cyclone that killed 14,200 in Andhra Pradesh on November 12, 1977.
Most of the deadliest tropical storms on earth have occurred in the Bay of Bengal when tremendous storm surges have swamped the low-lying coastal regions of Bangladesh, India, and Burma, says Burt. The worst of all was the Great Boha Cyclone of November 12-13, 1970 when a 40-foot storm surge overwhelmed the delta islands of the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers in Bangladesh. An estimated 300,000-500,000 perished. This storm is also considered to have produced the greatest storm surge of any Indian Ocean cyclone although similar surges may have occurred during the 1733 and 1876 cyclones.

History of cyclones in Odisha
SI.No.	Date/Year	Category of Cyclone	Landfall and loss
1.	7-12 October,1737	Super Cyclone	Crossed West Bengal Coast over Sunderbans
2.	31 October, 1831	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed Odisha Coast near Balasore, Loss of life-50,000
3.	2-5 October,1864	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed West Bengal Coast near Contai
4.	1-2 November, 1864	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed Andhra pradesh near Machilipatnam
5.	22 September, 1885	Super Cyclone	Crossed Odisha Coast at False Point, Loss of life- 5000
6.	14-16 October, 1942	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed West Bengal Coast near Contai
7.	8-11 October, 1967	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed Odisha Coast between Puri and Paradeep
8.	26-30 October, 1971	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed Odish Coast near Paradeep, Loss of life- 10,000
9.	14-20 November,1977	Super Cyclone	Crossed Andhra Coast near Nizampatnam
10.	4-11 May,1990	Super Cyclone	Crossed Andhra Coast about 40 Km S-W of Machlipatnam
11.	5-6 November, 1996	Very Severe Cyclonic Storm	Crossed Andhra Coast near Kakinada
12.	25-31 October, 1999	Super Cyclone	Crossed Odisha Coast near Paradeep at noon of 29 October

Phailin cyclone: how severe?

Experts in the West say Phailin is category 5 tropical cyclone, and may prove to be more devastating than even Hurricane Katrina

Source: University of WisconsinBoth London-based Tropical Storm and the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre have forecast winds reaching up to 315 km per hour on landfall, which would make Phailin a category 5 storm—the most powerful. India Meteorological Department has, however, were daying till Friday that the cyclone would not be so severe. Phailin originated over east-central Bay of Bengal and has since intensified while moving north-westwards, 800 km southeast of Paradip (Orissa) and 870 km east-southeast of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh).
Phailin rapidly intensified on Thursday from a tropical storm with 65 mph winds to a top-end category 5 storm in just 24 hours. After reaching peak intensity near 8 pm Thursday, Phailin (meaning sapphire in Thai) began an eyewall replacement cycle.
Eye of storm
Eyewall replacement cycles, also called concentric eyewall cycles, naturally occur in intense tropical cyclones, generally with winds greater than 185 kmph (115 mph), or major hurricanes (category 3 or above). When tropical cyclones reach this intensity, and the eyewall contracts or is already sufficiently small, some of the outer rain bands may strengthen and organize into a ring of thunderstorms—an outer eyewall—that slowly moves inward and robs the inner eyewall of its needed moisture and angular momentum. Since the strongest winds are in a cyclone's eyewall, the tropical cyclone usually weakens during this phase, as the inner wall is "choked" by the outer wall. Eventually the outer eyewall replaces the inner one completely, and the storm may re-intensify.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters's blog reads that in case of Phailin, the eyewall collapsed, and a new, larger-diameter eyewall formed from an outer spiral band. This process typically weakens the top winds of a tropical cyclone by 5-15 mph, and satellite estimates of Phailin's central pressure increased from 910 mb to 934 mb during the eyewall replacement cycle, on Friday. However, satellite images show that Phailin has completed its eyewall replacement cycle and is now re-intensifying, with the cloud tops of the very intense thunderstorms in the eyewall expanding and cooling, as updrafts in the eyewall grow stronger and push the clouds higher into the atmosphere.
The latest satellite estimate of Phailin's central pressure had dropped to 920 mb as on 13 UTC (9 am) on Friday. Radar out of Visakhatpanamin Andhra Pradesh shows that heavy rains from the outer bands of Phailin are already affecting the coast, and these bands were bringing rainfall rates of over an inch per hour, as estimated by microwave data from 10:55 UTC Friday. Phailin is over ocean waters that have warmed since Thursday, and are now 29 - 30°C. These warm waters extend to a lesser depth than before, and ocean heat content has dropped to a moderate 20 - 40 kJ/cm^2. Wind shear remains low, 5 - 10 knots.
In simpler terms, Phailin is now even bigger than Hurricane Katrina and half of the size of the Indian Sub-continent.

Tropical cyclone category system

CATEGORY 1 (tropical cyclone)
Negligible house damage. Damage to some crops, trees and caravans. Craft may drag moorings.
A Category 1 cyclone's strongest winds are GALES with typical gusts over open flat land of 90 - 125 km/h.
These winds correspond to Beaufort 8 and 9 (gales and strong gales).
CATEGORY 2 (tropical cyclone)
Minor house damage. Significant damage to signages, trees and caravans. Heavy damage to some crops. Risk of power failure. Small craft may break moorings.
A Category 2 cyclone's strongest winds are DESTRUCTIVE winds with typical gusts over open flat land of 125 - 164 km/h. These winds correspond to Beaufort 10 and 11 (Storm and violent storm).
CATEGORY 3 (severe tropical cyclone)
Some roof and structural damage. Some caravans destroyed. Power failures likely.
A Category 3 cyclone's strongest winds are VERY DESTRUCTIVE winds with typical gusts over open flat land of 165 - 224 km/h.
These winds correspond to the highest category on the Beaufort scale, Beaufort 12 (Hurricane).
CATEGORY 4 (severe tropical cyclone)
Significant roofing loss and structural damage. Many caravans destroyed and blown away. Dangerous airborne debris. Widespread power failures.
A Category 4 cyclone's strongest winds are VERY DESTRUCTIVE winds with typical gusts over open flat land of 225 - 279 km/h.
These winds correspond to the highest category on the Beaufort scale, Beaufort 12 (Hurricane).
CATEGORY 5 (severe tropical cyclone)
Extremely dangerous with widespread destruction.
A Category 5 cyclone's strongest winds are VERY DESTRUCTIVE winds with typical gusts over open flat land of more than 280 km/h.
These winds correspond to the highest category on the Beaufort scale, Beaufort 12 (Hurricane).

The Beaufort Scale
Beaufort scale		Cyclone category	Average wind speed (knots)	Average wind speed (km/h)	Estimating speed over land	Estimating speed over water
0	Calm		Less than 1	less than 1	Calm, smoke rises vertically.	Sea like mirror
1	Light Air		1 - 3	1 - 5	Direction of wind shown by smoke drift, but not by wind vanes.	Ripples with the appearance of scales are formed, but without foam crests
2	Light breeze		4 - 6	6 - 11	Wind felt on face; leaves rustle; ordinary wind vane moved by wind.	Small wavelets, still short, but more pronounced; crests have a glassy appearance and do not break
3	Gentle breeze		7 - 10	12 - 19	Leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends light flag.	Large wavelets; crests begin to break; foam of glassy appearance; perhaps scattered white horses
4	Moderate breeze		11 - 16	20 - 28	Raises dust and loose paper; small branches moved.	Small waves, becoming longer; fairly frequent white horses
5	Fresh breeze		17 - 21	29 - 38	Small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters.	Moderate waves, taking a more pronounced long form; many white horses are formed (chance of some spray)
6	Strong breeze		22 - 27	39 - 49	Large branches in motion; whistling heard in telegraph wires; umbrellas used with difficulty.	Large waves begin to form; the white foam crests are more extensive everywhere (probably some spray)
7	Near gale		28 - 33	50 - 61	Whole trees in motion; inconvenience felt when walking against the wind.	Sea heaps up and white foam from breaking waves begins to be blown in streaks along the direction of the wind
8	Gale	1	34 - 40	62 - 74	Breaks twigs off trees; generally impedes progress.	Moderately high waves of greater length; edges of crests begin to break into the spindrift; the foam is blown in well-marked streaks along the direction of the wind
9	Strong gale	1	41 - 47	75 - 88	Slight structural damage occurs (chimney pots and slates removed).	High waves; dense streaks of foam along the direction of the wind; crests of waves begin to topple, tumble and roll over; spray may affect visibility
10	Storm	2	48 - 55	89 - 102	Seldom experienced inland; trees uprooted; considerable structural damage occurs.	Very high waves with long overhanging crests; the resulting foam, in great patches, is blown in dense white streaks along the direction of the wind; on the whole, the surface of the sea takes a white appearance; the tumbling of the sea becomes heavy and shock-like; visibility affected
11	Violent storm	2	56 - 63	103 - 117	Very rarely experienced; accompanied by widespread damage.	Exceptionally high waves (small and medium sized ships might be for a time lost to view behind the waves); the sea is completely covered with long white patches of foam lying along the direction of the wind; everywhere the edges of the wave crests are blown into froth; visibility affected
12	Hurricane	3,4,5	64 and over	118 and over	Severe and extensive damage.	The air is filled with foam and spray; sea completely white with driving spray; visibility very seriously affected

Global tropical cyclone terminology Tropical cyclones can be defined in different ways elsewhere in the world. Often news reports from the United States or Asia will refer to hurricanes or typhoons. These are all tropical cyclones, but with different names. While the category definitions are not identical, the following provides an approximate guide for comparison
Australian name	Australian category	US*	US Saffir-Sim- pson cate- gory scale*	NW Pacific	Arabian Sea / Bay of Bengal	SW Indian Ocean	South Pacific (East of 160E)
Tropical low	-	Tropical depre- ssion	-	Tropical depre- ssion	Depression or severe depression	Tropical depre- ssion	Tropical depression
Tropical cyclone	1	Tropical storm	-	Tropical storm	Cyclonic storm	Moderate tropical storm	Tropical cyclone (Gale)
Tropical cyclone	2	Tropical storm	-	Severe tropical storm	Severe cyclonic storm	Severe tropical storm	Tropical cyclone (Storm)
Severe tropical Cyclone	3	Hurricane	1	Typhoon	Very severe cyclonic storm	Tropical cyclone	Tropical cyclone (Hurricane)
Severe tropical cyclone	4	Hurricane	2 - 3	Typhoon	Very severe cyclonic storm	Intense tropical cyclone	Tropical cyclone (Hurricane)
Severe tropical cyclone	5	Hurricane	4 - 5	Typhoon	Super cyclonic storm	Very intense tropical cyclone	Tropical cyclone (Hurricane)

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Phailin cyclone: all you need to know

Historically prone to cyclones

Phailin cyclone: how severe?