Cyclone Nisarga: Nearly 1,00,000 evacuated, rains from Mumbai to Hubli

All emergency services have been put on alert in Maharashtra, including non-Covid hospitals that have been told to prepare for a possible influx of emergency care patients.

Cyclone Nisarga began the landfall process around noon on Wednesday near the coastal town of Alibag, around 100 kilometres south of Mumbai, and it will continue for three hours, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday.

The impact of Cyclone Nisarga is see near the landfall site in Alibag on Wednesday.(Satish Bate/HT Photo)

The right side of the cyclone’s wall cloud passed through coastal Maharashtra, mainly covering the Raigad district.

The north-east sector of the eye of the cyclone is currently entering the land. The severe cyclone will cross Maharashtra coast, close to Alibag, around 4 pm.

Watch: Cyclone Nisarga makes landfall in Maharashtra; strong wind, rainfall witnessed 

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Here are the latest developments on Cyclone Nisarga:

1. The cyclone is currently whirling with a wind speed of 100-110 kmph, gusting to 120 kilometres per hour 40 km away from Alibagh, 95 km from Mumbai and 325 km from Surat.

2. Trees swayed wildly, as the rain pounded the coastal towns and several villages in Maharashtra. In Mumbai, high winds whipped skyscrapers and ripped apart shanty houses near the beach.

3. The weather bureau has sounded red alert for at least seven coastal districts of Maharashtra, while several districts along Gujarat’s coast are also expecting heavy rainfall.

4. Goa, south of Maharashtra, has already received 127 millimetres (5 inches) of torrential rain - about a week’s average, the IMD said.

5. The Maharashtra government on Wednesday said that it has evacuated around 60,000 people from the state’s coastal region of Konkan, and brought 7,003 fishing boats back to the shore with the help of disaster management authorities. The chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) said that nearly 1 lakh people have been evacuated from the two states.

6. He added that all emergency services have been put on alert, including non-Covid hospitals that have been told to prepare for a possible influx of emergency care patients.

7. High tides hit Dwarka coast in Gujarat. The state authorities had earlier said that 18 districts wil be affectedd by the cyclone. There were rain in Chhattisgarh as Nisarga made landfall. A NASA image of the cyclone had shown almost the entire central peninsula under clouds.

8. Rain also lashed Ratnagiri in Maharashtra and Hubli in Karnataka.

9. About 43 NDRF teams are deployed in the two states, of which 21 are in Maharashtra. Five teams of the Indian Navy have also been stationed at various places in Mumbai.

10. Nisarga comes on the heels of Cyclone Amphan, which killed more than 100 people as it ravaged West Bengal, Odisha and Bangladesh last month. Nisarga is the 65th named cyclone in the north Indian Ocean and its name, proposed by Bangladesh, means ‘nature’.