Cyclone Murasu makes landfall in Andhra Pradesh, India's second storm in a week

Cyclone Murasu came ashore on India's south-eastern coast before dawn on Tuesday, crossing the Andhra Pradesh coastline near the town of Ongole with sustained winds of up to 110 kph, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). It is the second cyclone to strike the same stretch of coast within a week, arriving less than six days after Cyclone Arnab left at least three people dead and damaged roads, trees and homes across the state, as reported at the time by the Associated Press.

The IMD classified Murasu as a severe cyclonic storm as its centre crossed the coast in Prakasam district between roughly 3:30am and 5:30am local time, with gusts reaching 120 kph, Reuters reported. The system had formed over the Bay of Bengal in the final days of October and strengthened as it tracked north-west toward the coast, prompting authorities in two states to begin moving residents out of its path a full day before landfall.

A second storm within a week

By Tuesday afternoon, more than 10,800 people had been evacuated from low-lying and coastal areas of Andhra Pradesh, while authorities in neighbouring Odisha reported moving upwards of 160,000 residents to safer ground, according to figures from the Press Trust of India carried by Outlook Traveller. Reuters had separately reported that Andhra Pradesh officials were planning to relocate roughly 30,000 people ahead of the storm, a figure that reflected the initial evacuation plan rather than the final tally recorded once the coast was clear.

Despite the scale of the movement, early damage reports described mostly uprooted trees, downed electricity poles and battered fishing boats along the shore, rather than the structural destruction associated with the most powerful storms to hit this coastline in past decades. No deaths or injuries had been confirmed by Tuesday afternoon, a markedly different early toll than the one left by Arnab, whose damage was still being assessed in the same districts when Murasu arrived.

Why the Bay of Bengal keeps producing cyclones

The Bay of Bengal is among the most cyclone-prone bodies of water on Earth, generating a disproportionate share of the tropical systems that form each year across the North Indian Ocean. Storms there typically cluster in two windows, one before India's summer monsoon and a second after it; the current spell, running from October into December, is the post-monsoon season now under way, and Murasu is already the second named storm of it.

The name itself, which means "drum" in Tamil, was proposed by India under a regional naming arrangement run out of the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) in New Delhi, which operates under the IMD and the Ministry of Earth Sciences. A World Meteorological Organization notice explains that the centre assigns names on behalf of a 13-member panel spanning the region from Bangladesh and Myanmar to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, drawing from an agreed list so that no name is ever reused once a storm carrying it has passed. India's Press Information Bureau has said RSMC New Delhi takes on naming duties once a system's sustained winds reach 34 knots, or roughly 62 kph — the threshold that separates a named cyclonic storm from an unnamed depression.

Evacuations, flight cancellations and a quiet toll so far

The storm disrupted travel across southern India well before its centre reached land. Airlines cancelled at least 19 domestic flights on Monday at airports serving Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati, while Chennai alone recorded 11 cancellations to destinations including Rajahmundry and Tiruchirappalli, according to PTI figures relayed by Outlook Traveller. South Coast Railway suspended train movement along part of the Vijayawada-Ongole-Gudur line after gale-force winds were recorded near a station on the route, diverting at least seven long-distance services, among them the Kerala Express, away from the affected stretch. Fishermen were told to stay off the water until Wednesday morning as a precaution.

Officials struck a cautious but measured tone in their public statements through the morning. Prakhar Jain, managing director of the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority, told Reuters:

No deaths or injuries have been reported so far.

That assessment was echoed in separate reporting carried by aNewz, which also noted that schools in Chennai and Tiruvallur, in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, had already shut after heavy rain and waterlogging on Monday, even before Murasu's centre had crossed the coast further north.

What's next

The IMD's forecast track called for Murasu to weaken quickly once onshore, dropping to a cyclonic storm with winds of 80-90 kph by Tuesday afternoon and further still to a deep depression by midnight. Even as the system loses strength, forecasters warned of extremely heavy rainfall across coastal Andhra Pradesh and the Yanam enclave through Tuesday, with very heavy rain expected to spread south into Tamil Nadu on Wednesday. Districts including Krishna, Guntur, Bapatla, Palnadu, NTR and Prakasam remained under active weather warnings into the evening.

For state governments in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, the immediate task is restoring power and rail links disrupted by two cyclones in eight days, while continuing to monitor low-lying districts for any delayed casualty reports of the kind that followed Arnab, where an initial "no loss of life" assessment from the state government was later revised once rescue teams reached cut-off villages and reported fatalities. Evacuees in both states are likely to remain in relief camps until local authorities judge flooded roads and waterlogged fields safe enough for a return home.

With India's post-monsoon cyclone season running into December, officials along the Bay of Bengal coast are bracing for the possibility that Murasu will not be the last storm this year to carry a name drawn from RSMC New Delhi's list. For residents of coastal Andhra Pradesh, many still clearing debris from one storm when the next one's warnings arrived, the immediate relief is that the damage this time has so far been markedly lighter, at least by the measure that matters most: no deaths, officials said, as the rain kept falling.