Severe Cyclone Murasu Heads for Landfall Near Ongole Tonight, a Week After Arnab

India's east coast is bracing for its second cyclone landfall in a week. Cyclone Murasu, which formed over the Bay of Bengal on Sunday, intensified into a severe cyclonic storm early on Monday, November 2, and is now aimed at the south Andhra Pradesh coast, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The department expects the storm to cross the coast between Nellore and Narsapur, close to Ongole, between 11:30 p.m. IST on November 2 and 4 a.m. IST on November 3 — 18:00 UTC on Monday to 22:30 UTC.

At landfall, the IMD expects sustained winds of 100–110 km/h (about 62–68 mph) with gusts reaching 120 km/h. That makes Murasu a severe cyclonic storm at the moment it comes ashore, the same stretch of coast that took Cyclone Arnab's landfall near Narsapur on October 28, only five days earlier.

The IMD's bulletins through Monday morning tracked a system moving steadily toward the coast. At 2:30 a.m. IST on November 2, the severe cyclonic storm was centred over the west-central and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal near 13.6°N, 82.5°E — about 260 km east-northeast of Chennai, 290 km east-southeast of Nellore, 310 km east-southeast of Kavali, 330 km southeast of Ongole and 470 km south of Visakhapatnam. It had moved nearly northwestwards at about 20 km/h over the previous six hours.

By 5:30 a.m. IST, the IMD's coastal weather bulletin placed the centre roughly 200 km east-northeast of Chennai, 210 km east-southeast of Nellore and 260 km southeast of Ongole, still moving northwest toward the Nellore–Narsapur crossing zone. You can follow the system's approach on WorldEye's hurricane tracker, which follows tropical systems worldwide, and watch the rain bands build on the weather radar.

The IMD's rainfall outlook spreads well beyond the landfall district. Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Yanam were forecast isolated extremely heavy rainfall on November 2 and isolated very heavy rainfall on November 3, with Rayalaseema also expecting isolated very heavy rain across both days. Chennai and Tiruvallur, in northern Tamil Nadu, were under a heavy to very heavy rainfall warning for November 2, and Odisha — still recovering from Arnab — was forecast isolated very heavy rainfall on November 3 and 4.

Heavy rain was also forecast in parts of Telangana, Puducherry and Karaikal, Karnataka and Kerala across November 2–3. For coastal districts, the combination that matters most is the timing: the heaviest rain is expected around and just after the overnight landfall, when visibility is lowest and rivers and drains are already running high after a wet week.

Preparedness work was under way on both sides of the landfall zone. In Odisha's Rayagada district, the administration deployed all 11 fire station teams and positioned heavy machinery — JCBs, excavators and Hydra cranes — at Gumma Ghati and Mukundpur Ghati to clear National Highway 326 quickly if landslides or debris blocked it. Officials there were working to a yellow warning through November 2, stepping up to an orange warning for November 3 and 4, after an emergency review meeting chaired by the District Collector on Sunday.

The strain is cumulative. India Today's November 2 report, cited in coverage of the twin storms, said more than 180,000 people (1.8 lakh) had been evacuated across Andhra Pradesh and Odisha during preparations for Cyclone Arnab the previous week. Many of the same shelters, warning systems and response teams are now being asked to do the same job again, six days later.

Once a Bay of Bengal cyclone crosses the coast, it usually weakens quickly as it loses its supply of warm ocean air — but its rain often does not. Murasu's remnants are expected to keep feeding heavy rain into Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha into November 4 even as the winds fall away. The official word remains the IMD's bulletins and state disaster-management instructions; anyone in the landfall zone between Nellore and Narsapur should follow those, not storm-track maps, for decisions about moving to shelter.

WorldEye will keep the storm on the hurricane tracker through landfall and its inland decay. For the background on how this storm formed and why it is the northeast monsoon's second Bay of Bengal cyclone, see our November 1 report on Murasu's formation.