Cyclone Arnab Hits Eastern India, Leaving at Least Three Dead and Heavy Damage

A deadly cyclonic storm struck India's eastern coastline early Wednesday morning, unleashing destructive winds of up to 84 miles per hour, knocking out electrical power, and leaving at least three people dead. Cyclone Arnab made landfall in the state of Andhra Pradesh, bringing torrential downpours and toppling trees across major roadways, prompting widespread emergency operations across the southern and eastern regions of the country.

Disaster relief officials confirmed the fatalities shortly after the tempest pushed ashore. Narendra Singh Bundela, a senior official with India's National Disaster Response Force, stated that three people were killed as the storm struck and confirmed that Andhra Pradesh absorbed the brunt of the impact. Officials in the office of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu reported to Reuters that two of the fatalities occurred as a result of a falling tree and an electrocution.

Extensive physical destruction was recorded across coastal settlements in the hours following landfall. In a letter directed to federal Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Minister Naidu reported that the storm brought down at least 220 trees, destroyed no fewer than 180 residences, and severely disrupted power transmission grids across multiple districts. India's Meteorological Department had warned that a coastal storm surge rising up to 1.5 meters above normal tide levels would submerge low-lying terrain, creating widespread alarm among vulnerable communities. In the Kakinada district, which sat directly in the storm's path, one local resident described the chaos, stating, "No one knew whose house the water would rush into next or whose home would be submerged."

To minimize casualties, authorities had launched massive preemptive evacuation efforts. At least 180,000 residents were moved to safety across the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha on Tuesday, a day before the cyclone hit. Despite those precautions, government agencies estimated that more than 12 million people resided within the cyclone's projected corridor. Regional transportation ground to a halt as transit officials canceled numerous commercial flights and train routes, while local educational authorities ordered schools to suspend classes.

Meteorological tracking showed that Cyclone Arnab made landfall categorized as a "very severe cyclonic storm"—the third-highest classification on the regional meteorological scale—before weakening to a "severe" cyclonic storm as it pushed inland. Before its final approach, the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center tracked Arnab approximately 534 miles southwest of Kolkata, recording top sustained winds of 213 kilometers per hour, equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Beyond structural infrastructure, agricultural authorities cautioned that heavy rains and high winds posed significant threats to farmlands, with potential ruin facing standing plantations of banana, papaya, and drumstick trees across Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.

The storm's vast circulation also prompted emergency advisories across South Asia, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. In Sri Lanka, education officials shut down schools while the national Department of Meteorology issued urgent warnings regarding potential flash flooding and mudslides. In neighboring Nepal, authorities suspended trekking permits for three days and barred tourists from ascending into high-altitude areas, anticipating intense downpours, severe snowstorms, and deadly avalanches through Saturday. The suspension interrupted peak hiking season, during which roughly 750 hikers normally obtain trekking permits each day, in a nation still reeling from an August mountain collapse that killed over 1,400 people and left at least 5,000 missing.

Arnab represents an unusual disruption in what has otherwise been a remarkably quiet cyclone period for the North Indian Ocean, which typically experiences twin activity peaks between April to June and October to December. Weather experts point to the broader influence of a powerful El Niño system, which has heavily suppressed storm formation in the Indian basin by weakening seasonal monsoons. "One of the key climatic events has been the suppression of the Indian monsoon and with it, the much reduced tropical cyclone activity, driven by the long reach of the El Niño," said Christian Werner, managing director of Global Weather Climate Analytics. While El Niño has subdued storms in the Indian and Atlantic oceans, it has simultaneously propelled the Northwest Pacific toward one of its most intense typhoon seasons on record.