Cyclone Hud Hud has crossed the Andaman and Nicobar islands close to Long Island and has put itself on for a raucous journey over the open waters of the Bay of Bengal.

Named after the Israeli national bird, ‘Hud Hud’ would move towards north Andhra Pradesh-south Odisha coasts over the next four days.

Very severe cyclone India Met Department said in an update that it would continue to move west-northwestwards, intensify into a severe cyclonic storm by Thursday and subsequently into a very severe cyclonic storm by Friday.

According to the Met, the area of landfall would be between Visakhapatnam and Gopalpur, expected to happen around noon of Sunday.

The peak wind speeds associated with the system would be in the range of 130-140 km/hr gusting to 155 km/hr (very severe cyclonic storm) on Saturday and at the time of landfall on Sunday.

This was as per an analysis put out by the Met Department at 12 noon on Wednesday. But an update issued by the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre two hours later tended to suggest higher wind speeds.

Landfall area According to the US model, the cyclone could feature ferocious winds speeding up to 175 km/hr and gusting to 213 km/hr on Saturday. The landfall point was shown as just north of Visakhapatnam.

London-based Tropical Storm Risk Group also suggested the same area as the likely landfall point.

In either case, ‘Hud Hud’ seems to act as a worthy successor to ‘Phailin’ that hit the same coast last year after it took birth in the Gulf of Thailand/Andaman Sea and put itself on a long haul across the Bay. ‘Phailin’ had also stuck to a strikingly similar timeline in precipitating landfall and ‘achieving closure’ on October 12, 2013.

Meanwhile, a heavy weather warning said that Hud Hud would bring heavy to very heavy rainfall over south Odisha coast with isolated extremely heavy falls from Saturday evening.

High winds, heavy rain Heavy to very heavy rainfall would also commence at a few places over Visakhapatnam, Vijayanagaram, and Srikakulam districts of north coastal Andhra Pradesh and north coastal districts of Odisha. Squally winds clocking 50-60 km/hr gusting to 70 km/hr would commence along north Andhra and Odisha coasts from Saturday morning onwards.

The wind speed would rachet up to 140 km/hr gusting to 150 km/hr from Sunday morning.

Sea condition would be ‘rough to very rough’ (8 ft to 20 ft in wave height) from Saturday morning. It would gradually become ‘phenomenal’ (wave height of up to 46 ft) from Sunday morning onwards.

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