Cyclone Montha making landfall in India, threatening millions with torrential rains and gusty winds

NEW DELHI (AP) — Cyclone Montha started making landfall along India’s eastern coast, the weather office said late Tuesday, with the storm due to bring torrential rains and strong winds.

Montha, swirling over the Bay of Bengal, intensified into a severe cyclonic storm that threatens flooding of low-lying areas in southern Andhra Pradesh and neighboring states through the night.

“Latest observations indicate that the landfall process has commenced,” the Indian Meteorological Department said in its latest bulletin. The process was expected to continue for the next three to four hours.

The storm was hovered around 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of the port city of Kakinada in southern Andhra Pradesh state as it makes landfall. The weather system is expected to intensify, bringing winds of 90-110 kph (55-68 mph) as the cyclone pushes toward the country’s eastern coastline.

Indian authorities have shut schools and evacuated tens of thousands of people from low-lying coastal areas as a precautionary measure to brace for Montha's impact.

The weather office issued so-called red alerts — the highest level of weather warnings — for 19 districts in Andhra Pradesh, forecasting extremely heavy rains. The neighboring states of Telangana, Odisha and Chhattisgarh are also expected to receive moderate to heavy showers in the next few hours.

Disaster teams in Andhra Pradesh have evacuated 38,000 people from low-lying areas to relief camps, according to a state disaster official. The state government estimates around 4 million people to be in vulnerable areas and likely to be affected by the cyclone.

“We are assessing the impact of Cyclone Montha on the state on an hourly basis. We are fully prepared to face any situation,” the state’s highest-elected official N. Chandrababu Naidu said on X.

State authorities have readied 1,906 relief camps and 364 school shelters as evacuations continue in 1,238 vulnerable villages. Schools and colleges have been ordered to remain shut until Wednesday, and fishermen were warned not to venture to sea. Trains and flights were partially disrupted on Tuesday.

In Odisha, the state administration began shifting around 32,000 people early Tuesday from vulnerable areas to relief camps, a state disaster official said.

Climate scientists say severe storms are becoming more frequent in South Asia. Global warming driven by planet-heating gases has caused them to become more extreme and unpredictable.

India’s eastern coasts have long been prone to cyclones, but the number of intense storms is increasing along the country’s coast. India’s deadliest cyclone season in recent years was in 2023, killing 523 people and causing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage.

Tropical cyclones, which are called hurricanes or typhoons in other regions, are among the world’s most devastating natural disasters when they hit densely populated coastal areas.

Increasingly warmer oceans are resulting in intensifying storms, especially near coastal regions, as they derive energy from the warm waters, climate experts say.

“Global warming is increasing the air temperature and is also making oceans warm. And if an ocean is very warm, it is going to supply a lot of energy to any tropical storm over the ocean,” said Akshay Deoras, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in England.

India, the world’s most populous country, is among the highest emitters of planet-heating gases and is also considered to be among the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate impacts.

In 2024 alone, there were 167 disasters in Asia, which was the most of any continent, according to the Emergency Events Database maintained by the University of Louvain in Belgium. The storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes led to losses of over $32 billion, the researchers found.