Cyclone ‘Vardah’ stays put, misses timeline for ramp-up

Cyclone ‘Vardah’ remained practically stationary through Friday morning and missed the timeline fixed for intensification as a severe cyclone.

The India Met Department (IMD) has extended the window for the recalibration into the night as the cyclone lay 990 km away from Visakhapatnam, on the Andhra Pradesh coast.

‘Vardah’ is expected to intensify, move initially north-west (looking at the Odisha coast) and west-north-west (Andhra Pradesh) but weaken slightly ahead of landfall.

The targeted area of landfall has been reduced to a shorter stretch between Nellore and Machilipatnam (from Nellore and Kakinada, as per initial projections).

The IMD has warned of heavy rain at a few places over coastal Andhra Pradesh on Sunday with very heavy falls at isolated places over north coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Squally winds with speeds of 40-50 km/hr and gusting to 60 km/hr are likely to prevail along and off the coast through the day.

Sea conditions will stay ‘rough’ to ‘very rough’ and fishermen have been advised not to venture out. Similar warnings have been extended for Monday, the day of landfall, and Tuesday as well.

The US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Centre has said that after landfall takes place, the remnant of ‘Vardah’ would roll down westward across the peninsula and enter the Arabian Sea. It will drop rain of varying amounts, but not much is shown as spilling over into the southern parts of the Peninsula.

Parts of the northern parts of the Tamil Nadu coast, including Chennai, are expected to receive rain during the cross-over but heavier rains are indicated for the interior.

Meanwhile, weather models have been talking about a wave of rain approaching the Tamil Nadu coast once ‘Vardah’ fades out over land.

Some of them see the possibility of a low-pressure area moving west across the Bay to bring in the rain; others suspect that an ‘easterly wave,’ a potent but elongated low-pressure area, is in the making.

The US National Centre for Environmental Prediction sees rain panning out across the Tamil Nadu coast between December 17-25, which the IMD, too, appears to concur with.

During the period between October 1 and November, the rain deficit for the southern part of the Peninsula was as high as 70 per cent. The next worst performer was North-West India, with a deficit of 65 per cent.