Cyclone Fani is expected to make landfall 10 km north of Chandrabhaga in Puri district on Friday afternoon. With a wind speed of up to 200 km per hour, it is likely to affect Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal over the weekend.
Cyclone Fani, which has turned into an 'extremely severe cyclonic' storm is about 540 km away from the Odisha coast, tweeted IMD. This is not the first time that Odisha is being hit by a cyclone. The state had to evacuate around 3,00,000 people when it was hit by Cyclone Titli last year with winds up to 150 kms/hr that saw at least two people being killed.
Here's how cyclones are named
With so much devastation being caused by these natural calamities, one tends to wonder how cyclones are named. The tradition, it turns out, started with hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, where tropical storms that reach wind speeds of 39 miles per hour were given names.
If the speed of the wind reached or crossed 74 miles per hour, they were classified into a hurricane/ cyclone/ typhoon. Tropical cyclones are given a name only if they become one of the former three.
Currently, tropical cyclones are officially named by one of the eleven warning centres spread under the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). All cyclone names are submitted to the World Meteorological Organization Regional Tropical Cyclone Committee for a final nod of approval.
Names of cyclones can only be changed if the storm causes a large number of deaths or damages.
Interestingly, the name Fani was proposed by Bangladesh and was selected as an identification name by the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre in Delhi, as per the World Meteorological Organisation.
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