Tropical Cyclone To Reach Lower East India Coast Friday
By Drew Lerner
Kansas City, Nov. 30 (World Weather Inc.) – Tropical Cyclone 4B formed in the Bay of Bengal Tuesday afternoon and was expected to reach the lower east coast of India Friday. The storm will not likely reach above tropical storm status, but some heavy rain will fall in portions of Tamil Nadu and possibly extreme southern Andhra Pradesh. Damage to crops and personal property is not very likely, although rain in unharvested cotton areas will not be welcome and there will be delays to 
harvesting of late summer crops.
At 0300 GMT today, the center of Tropical Cyclone 4B was located 907 miles south of Calcutta, India at 7.9 north, 86.1 east moving northwesterly at 13 mph and producing a maximum sustained wind speed of 40 mph. Tropical Storm force wind was occurring out 40 miles from the center of the storm.
Tropical Cyclone 4B will intensify Wednesday and Thursday possibly peaking with a sustained wind speed of 60 mph. The storm will continue moving northwesterly today and will turn more to the west as it nears the Tamil Nadu and lower Andhra Pradesh coast Thursday. Moderate to heavy rainfall will accompany the storm inland with rainfall of 1.00 to 4.00 inches and local totals over 6.00 inches occurring from the lower Andhra Pradesh coast through most of Tamil Nadu to parts of Kerala. The storm will reach the coast Friday near the Tamil Nadu/Andhra Pradesh coast. The storm will move westerly across the southern tip of India during the weekend possibly emerging in the southeastern Arabian Sea as a weak tropical depression or disturbance. Some reorganization may occur over the Arabian Sea, but World Weather, Inc. believes the storm may break up too much over the mountainous terrain in southwestern India to allow making it difficult to regeneration to take place.
In the meantime, another tropical disturbance in the southeastern Bay of Bengal Saturday and Sunday will move toward the central east coast of India by Wednesday of next week. This developing tropical cyclone will have potential to become more intense and could bring damaging wind and flooding rain to the upper India east coast late next week or in the following weekend. Obviously, this storm is far enough from land that time is great for a change in the storm’s predicted path and projected intensity warranting a close watch.
This week’s tropical cyclone is not likely to become intense enough to cause serious damage in cotton, rice, sorghum, sugarcane or groundnut production areas. Some heavy rain will evolve, but the region is dry enough that much of the rain will be quickly absorbed limiting the potential for serious flooding. The storm’s peak wind intensity will also be high enough to induce some minor damage to sugarcane and the storm’s rain could discolor any unharvested cotton fiber in the region. However, none of these crops or others will be seriously impacted and production should not be greatly affected.
A close monitoring of the storm is warranted for signs of change in its predicted behavior and intensity.
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