Potentially catastrophic cyclone Phailin, size of Katrina, headed for India

[peoli]

Source: The Washington Post

Over the last day, a cyclone over the Bay of Bengal has explosively strengthened as it marches towards the east coast of India, presenting a clear and present danger to the country of over a billion people.
In the last 18 hours, Phailin’s peak winds have increased an astonishing 80 mph (or 70 knots), a rare rate of intensification.
“Based on satellite estimates, maximum sustained winds are now easily around 160 mph (140 knots),” says Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at WeatherBell.com, a private forecasting services company.
Those wind speeds would make Phailin the equivalent of a category 5 hurricane, capable of catastrophic damage.
Phailin is not only intense, but also large.
“It’s equivalent to Katrina in size,” Maue says.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/10/10/potentially-catastrophic-cyclone-phailin-headed-for-india/

[MrScorpio]

1. I'm surprised that no one has ever thunked up this name for Grifterella

Hopefully the people in South Asia come out of this safely.

[XemaSab]

5. God help me

That was my first thought.

[msanthrope]

7. Me, too. nt

[Fumesucker]

13. +3

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. How do you evacuate millions of people in India...

This is bound to end very badly for the poor people.

[Recursion]

15. The only "bright" side is that it's a less populated part of the coast

It's still crazy crowded by western standards, but Brahmapur / Bhubaneswar is about 1.5 million people, as opposed to Calcutta (5 million) or Madras (7 million), which it seems to be threading between (fingers crossed).

I'll be in Calcutta at projected landfall, so... ugh.

(To answer your specific question, usually with municipal buses.)

[polly7]

3. Oh, no. I sure hope this isn't as bad as they're thinking. :( nt.

[kestrel91316]

4. My sister and BIL are going to India the end of Oct for 2 weeks or more.

And there has been so much political unrest there........

[dhol82]

10. crappe

i will be leaving on october 26 for about 3 weeks in india. hope there's something to see.

seriously, it all depends on where the cyclone hits and how much moisture is included in the hit. don't think your sister and bil will have any problems.

[kestrel91316]

12. I think they will be in the west, like Mumbai and Ahmedabad. My niece's husband is from there.

[panader0]

6. Damn! That looks bad!

Hang on India.

[bucolic_frolic]

8. America will be without Tech Support for 2 weeks!

Time to short Verizon

[Recursion]

16. That's mostly in Hyderabad and Bangalore, 800 - 1000 miles south of landfall

Plus they're inland; the coasts never got the call center development that the inland east did. For reasons that should be fairly obvious at this moment.

[Berlum]

9. "We don't beeleeve it. And we don't care." - RepubliBaggers (R)

[Mira]

11. This is terribly upsetting to me. Especially

since we don't have news that have an agenda other than their own. We don't even know what a good news cast that encompassed world news looks and sounds like.

[starroute]

14. Here's the forecast track

And the satellite image.

[peoli]

17. thats huge

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. India evacuates 440,000 people ahead of cyclone: disaster agency

Nearly half a million people have been evacuated from India's impoverished east coast ahead of a massive cyclone expected to make landfall on Saturday evening, disaster officials said.

"The total is 4.4 lakh (440,000 evacuations) in all this," Marri Shashidhar Reddy, vice-chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, told a news conference ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Phailin.
...
Sometimes authorities were having to "use force" to get reluctant villagers to leave their homes despite the already lashing rains and strong winds, he added.

The evacuation was the third largest in India's history after 650,000 people were evacuated in Andhra Pradesh in 1990 out of the way of a powerful cyclone and 550,000 in 2009 in the same state due to flooding, Reddy said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hulMC29f9kKyt2cI3yOzMt0TAO6A?docId=0a8c3acc-cb11-4945-ae11-49c7c56e4392

[JI7]

19. looks like it will hit some of the poorest and worst off parts of India

i wonder if that's part of the reason they continue to be worst off than some of the other parts.

[Celefin]

20. I read 'Palin' at first glance.

Not to make light of the impending disaster.