Arnab Is Gone — But Will Another Cyclone Rise?
Arnab crossed near Yanam in the small hours of 28 October. IMD's gridded rainfall now shows what it actually dropped — a 250 mm peak over the north Andhra hills, Extremely Heavy Rain to the right of the track, exactly where the forecast put it, though about a quarter too wet. Here is the verification, the human cost as far as open sources agree on it, and the system already crossing the Bay behind it.
The Invisible Hand: What Steers Cyclone Arnab — and Why It Turns Right
Arnab has an eye, and the VayuMet model puts core winds near 144 km/h — Very Severe Cyclonic Storm strength. But a cyclone does not drive itself. It is carried. This is the 200 hPa flow over this morning's Himawari image, the steering vector that actually decides the track, and the reason the storm turns from west to north within 24 hours.
A Cyclone's Heartbeat: The Hidden Story in Pressure Rise and Fall
Every bulletin gives you one pressure number. It tells you how strong a system is, not what it is doing. This is the chart forecasters actually lean on — how much pressure has changed in 24 hours at every point on the map. The Bay system reads as a moving dipole: a deep red core of falling pressure ahead, a blue halo of rising pressure behind, with the fall touching −32 hPa and the rise +26. At 14°N the rapid-deepening threshold is only 6.7 hPa, so that fall is nearly five times a tropical weather bomb.
Arnab Rising: The Bay of Bengal Brews Its First Storm of 2026
The picture has gone clear: a tropical storm is forming over the central Bay of Bengal. A depression takes shape on 23 October, stalls two days while it organises, then reaches Very Severe Cyclonic Storm strength before crossing near Srikakulam on the north Andhra coast late on 27 October. And 2026 has not named a single storm yet — so when this one passes 62 km/h it takes the name that has been waiting all year: Arnab, Bangladesh's contribution, meaning ocean.
One Low Will Die Off Somalia. The Other Is Walking Toward Odisha.
Two low pressure areas, one ocean apart. The Arabian Sea system drifts west and fills near the Horn of Africa — nothing for India. The one that matters forms over the Andaman Sea around 21–23 October, deepens hard, and the 19 October model run drives it onto the north Odisha coast near Kendrapara and Bhadrak around 27 October. The run takes it to Very Severe Cyclonic Storm intensity. IMD's cyclone page shows nil cyclogenesis over the Bay for the next 168 hours, while IMD's own Bharat Forecast System develops one over the Andaman Sea on 25 October. That disagreement is the story. Here is what the model shows, why IMD may well be right, and what costs nothing to prepare.
Forty Millimetres Means Nothing — What an Impact-Based District Warning Actually Says
A rainfall figure is not a warning. The same 40 mm is routine in Kozhikode and a flood in Jaisalmer, and the same thunderstorm means avoid penetration to a dispatcher, lodging risk to a farmer and a steep ramp event to a grid scheduler. How VayuMet turns one district forecast into four different advisories, what the colour ladder means, and where the method stops.
1,064 mm in a Day — Anatomy of the Valsad Deluge, India's Third-Highest Daily Rainfall Ever | A VayuMet Analysis
Umbergaon (Valsad) logged ~1,064 mm in 24 hours — India's third-highest daily total on record. VayuMet decodes the drivers on annotated GFS 00 & 12 UTC charts: a well-marked low, a mid-level cyclonic circulation, deep ascent, and upper-level divergence that aligned vertically over Valsad by 23 July — with a surging Arabian Sea Low-Level Jet and near-zero steering locking the rain machine over one coastal belt for 36 hours.
Gangetic Plains on Fire: Severe Heat Wave 22–29 May — Relief Storms Due 30 May
A powerful heat wave is gripping Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, UP and Bihar with temperatures 6–9°C above normal. Fazilka (Punjab) forecast to touch 48.7°C on 29 May — the peak day. A line of severe thunderstorms sweeping across Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and UP on 30 May is expected to bring dramatic relief, with convective gusts up to 95 km/h over Gurdaspur.