With cyclone ‘Titli’ winging up energy from the Bay of Bengal and intensifying into a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm (VSCS) by 11 am on Wednesday, Gopalpur in Ganjam district is to face the worst wrath as the ‘eye’ of the storm. And the fury of Titli is also to vent maximally on districts like Khordha, Puri, Cuttack.
Overall, the impact of the Titli would mostly be on Odisha only, suggests cyclone analyses by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC).
According to INCOIS and JTWC, the maximum heights of tides in Gopalpur would be of 18 feet to 19 feet when the cyclone would make its landfall mostly in and around Gopalpur at around 5:30 am on Thursday.
The fury of Titli is forecast to last till 11:30 am on Thursday in Ganjam, Puri, Khordha and Cuttack districts.
Both analyses show the cyclone is to first move north and then rapidly Re-curve towards northeast moving over landmass of coastal Odisha towards West Bengal. Another significant prediction that holds maximum potential damage to crops, physical assets and lives is surface wind speed which would touch around 140-150 km per hour gusting up to 165 km.
While the INCOIS analysis revealed the significant wave height at over 14 feet in Ganjam over and above the swell height of around 4 feet together taking the maximum significant wave height to around 18 feet, the JTWC put the estimated maximum significant wave height at 19 feet. Now, the extent of damage due to inundation depends on the exact place of landfall of Titli.
If the cyclone makes landfall near high sand dunes of Gopalpur, the inundation risk due to storm surge would be low; and if vice versa, the damage would be high.
Not only Ganjam, the analyses show high risk for districts like Puri and Cuttack, where the storm surge and tidal heights together would touch around 17 feet and 15 feet, respectively.
Also as JTWC satellite image showed the cyclone with deep convective bands of clouds, it would induce very heavy rainfall in the districts of Ganjam, Puri, Khordha and Cuttack.
The significance is high storm surge and vey heavy rainfall would bring untold miseries for inhabitants and farmers of the districts of Ganjam, Puri and Cuttack.
Now the moot point why Titli moved towards Odisha? According to the JTWC, the path of Titli was determined by the subtropical ridge located over northwest Thailand, whose western edge passes over Odisha.
What is subtropical ridge? It’s a semi-permanent warm air circulation feature over oceans where the atmospheric pressure remains high.
It’s under this air circulation Odisha has witnessed sunny skies and unusually hot and arid days in last week of September and first week of October.
And this warm air circulation factored in forming of the Titli in the Bay of Bengal.
