High alert as Cyclone Biparjoy approaches India, Pakistan coasts

The severe cyclonic storm is likely to hit India’s west coast and southern Pakistan later this week.

A storm off India’s western coast has strengthened to become a powerful cyclone that could hit India’s Gujarat state and southern parts of Pakistan this week, the weather department says.

The cyclone, named Biparjoy, is expected to make landfall on Thursday afternoon between Mandvi in Gujarat and Karachi in Pakistan with a maximum sustained wind speed of 125-135kmph (78-84mph), gusting up to 150kmph (93mph), the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Monday.

The IMD has advised fishing communities to halt operations and the evacuation of people from the coastal areas of Saurashtra and Kutch regions of Gujarat.

Two of India’s biggest ports – Mundra and Kandla – are in the Gulf of Kutch, while the Jamnagar refinery, the world’s biggest oil refinery complex owned by Reliance Industries, is based in the Saurashtra region.

The Gujarat Pipavav Port Limited, in a stock exchange filing on Monday, said operations at its Pipavav Port had been suspended since late Saturday evening due to “prevailing severe weather conditions”.

Seven teams of India’s National Disaster Response Force and 12 teams of State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in the districts likely to be affected by the cyclone, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel said in a tweet.

Nearly a dozen districts in coastal Gujarat would be affected by heavy rainfall and gusting winds, although some of the districts are sparsely populated, which would limit the damage, said a weather official who declined to be named.

In neighbouring Pakistan, the National Disaster Management Authority said instructions were being given for precautionary measures in southern and southeastern parts of the country that are likely to be affected.

“Its [the cyclone’s] evolving impact will only be certain with further development of the situation,” the authority said in a statement.

Officials from the Sindh provincial government also said they were preparing to evacuate people from three districts likely to be affected.

Sindh is the second most populated province in the country.

The strongest cyclone to hit Pakistan was the 1999 Keti Bandar, a category 3 storm on the Saffir–Simpson scale. It resulted in the deaths of 6,200 people in Sindh’s impoverished Thatta district, where Biparjoy is also likely to hit.

In India’s Gujarat state, a 1998 cyclone killed at least 4,000 people and caused damage estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Biparjoy delayed the onset of the annual monsoon over the southern state of Kerala, but now conditions are favourable for the progress of much-needed rains in some more parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu states, a weather office said.