Cyclone Montha forecasts go south, so does landfall
BHUBANESWAR: Cyclone Montha did not live up to the hype and proved weather forecasters wrong as it changed its trajectory, and course, late on Tuesday. Much of the predictions for Odisha went completely haywire.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had projected that Montha will make landfall around Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. However, the system crossed the coast about 100 km south of Kakinada, around Narasapur area.
There were significant alerts that eight districts of Odisha would be affected by the cyclonic storm. However, the tropical storm’s change in direction spared the state even extremely heavy rainfall which is defined as 204.5 mm or more. The highest rainfall in last 24 hours was 150 mm in Gajapati’s Gosani block.
Interestingly, the Centre for Environment and Climate (CEC) of SOA Deemed to be University here had predicted on Tuesday that the system would have limited impact. “Montha suddenly weakened near the coast due to cold water and release of latent heat was not enough to maintain temperature of sea surface water,” it said.
Another weather expert pointed out that forecast can be accurate only if a cyclonic storm makes a landfall within 50 km range of the predicted location. “As the tropical storm went south from Kakinada, Telangana received extremely rainfall on Wednesday and Odisha did not bear its brunt,” he added.
Sources in the IMD said various models had indicated the cyclone would cross the coast about 50 km north of Kakinada but instead, it went southwards. “Montha was not a very strong system and influenced by the environmental conditions like the wind pattern and the Eastern Ghats as well. It was a category-1 severe cyclone (wind speeds 90 kmph to 100 kmph) and the forecast never indicated that Odisha would be severely impacted,” they claimed.
An IMD official asserted that their forecast was accurate as the cyclone crossed the coast between Machilipatnam and Kalingapatnam as was predicted.
Director of Bhubaneswar Meteorological Centre Manorama Mohanty said about about 32 places of Odisha received heavy rainfall in the last 24 hours under influence of Montha which crossed Andhra Pradesh coastline and weakened into a cyclone late on Tuesday night. Gosani and Patrapur received 150 mm and 120 mm rains respectively, she added.
As per the national weather forecaster, the system further weakened into a deep depression and into a depression over south Chhattisgarh on Wednesday evening.