Mocha Cyclone: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday informed that the system is continuing the weakening trend and will weaken into a very severe cyclonic storm during the next 3 hours. It was located near Latitude 20.5N and Longitude 92.9E at 1430 IST, about 40 km north of Myanmar's Sittwe and 145 km southeast of 's Cox’s Bazar.
Mocha made landfall
A senior Met official on Sunday informed that it made landfall along the Myanmar-Bangladesh coasts after intensifying into the equivalent of a category-five storm. “The ‘eye’ or the centre point of the cyclone made its landfall shortly after midday today on the Teknaf shorelines, coming through the Naf River, ahead of its anticipated time,” Bangladesh Met office spokesman AKM Nazmul Huda told PTI.
He said the tail or the rest part of the severe storm, which was categorised as a very dangerous category-five cyclone, might take more time to cross the coastlines.
The system is continuing the weakening trend
'It lay centered at 1430 hours IST of today the 14th May 2023 over coastal Myanmar near latitude 20.5°N and longitude 92.9°E, about 40 km north of Sittwe (Myanmar) and 145 km southeast of Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh). The system is continuing the weakening trend and will weaken into a very severe cyclonic storm during next 3 hours,' IMD informed.
Bangladesh's St Martin's island may go underwater temporarily
As Cyclone Mocha intensifies and winds are getting stronger, Saint Martin's, the one and only coral island of Bangladesh, may go temporarily underwater, according to the head of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), reported Dhaka Tribune.
"Since there is no major infrastructure on the island, the storm will not get obstructed anywhere and hit the island directly. As the centre of the storm passes over St Martin's, water will move from one side of the island to the other, and due to the intensity of the storm, the island may be underwater for some time," BMD Director Md Azizur Rahman said on Sunday.
(with inputs from agencies)
