Cyclone Sitrang
Cyclone Sitrang to hit four dists of West Bengal; Kolkata and other southern dists to be partially affected
Kolkata: A low-pressure area developed over the north Andaman sea and adjacent south Andaman sea deepened into a depression on Saturday morning, the IMD said in its bulletin.
The depression stretches over 1460 km south-southeast of West Bengal’s Sagar Island and is likely to intensify into a cyclonic storm by October 24.
The system will move northwestwards and intensify further into a Deep Depression over eastcentral and adjoining southeast Bay of Bengal on Sunday.
On October 25 the cyclone would make landfall between Tinkona and Sandwip islands in Bangladesh, the weatherman said.
The weather department said the cyclone would batter through the North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts of West Bengal. The cyclone would also affect East Medinipur partially.
As per the forecast, isolated areas of Kolkata, Nadia, Howrah, Hooghly, Jhargram, West Medinipur, and East Bardhaman districts will be slightly affected.
On Monday and Tuesday, the skies across all the districts in south Bengal will remain overcast, and light to medium rainfall is expected.
IMD has issued an alert for heavy rainfall and wind speed gusting to 100 km/ hr on October 24 (Monday) in the North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts.
On Friday, Union cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba took stock of the preparedness of ministries, agencies and state governments to tackle the situation, including possible devastation, out of Cyclone Sitrang during the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) meeting.
Cabinet Secretariat said in a statement: "The NDRF has made its teams available to the States and additional teams are also being kept in readiness. Rescue and relief teams of the Army and Navy along with ships and aircraft have been kept ready on standby,"
"The aim should be to keep loss of lives to zero and minimize damage to property and infrastructure such as power and telecom, and in case of damage to this infrastructure, it must be restored in the shortest possible time," the statement read.
Fishermen have been asked to suspend all fishing activities and stay away from the sea from Sunday till Tuesday.
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