Krishna, EG are " very highly cyclone prone": Centre

Hyderabad, July 22 (INN): The Central Government has placed Krishna and East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh in the list of 12 districts in the country which are "very highly prone" to cyclones.

The ESSO-IMD has conducted a survey on cyclone prone area in the country. Ninety six districts including 72 districts touching the coast and 24 districts not touching the coast, but lying within 100 km from the coast have been classified based on their proneness in terms of frequency of total cyclones and severe cyclones crossing the district; strength of actual/estimated wind speed and wind strength affecting the district, probable maximum storm surge (PMSS) and daily probable maximum precipitation (PMP) over the district based on data of 1891-2010.

Out of 96 districts, 12 are very highly prone, 41 are highly prone, 30 are moderately prone and remaining 13 are less prone. Twelve very highly prone districts include South and North 24 Praganas, Medinipur and Kolkata of West Bengal, Balasore, Bhadrak, Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur districts of Odisha, Nellore, Krishna and east Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh and Yanam of Puducherry.

The Centre has claimed that adoption of improved local forecast systems for the past 5-7 years have demonstrated enhanced forecast skill by about 18% quantitatively as far as the track and landfall forecasts of the tropical cyclones are concerned. Stating this in a written reply in Lok Sabha today the Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Shri Y.S.Chowdary said the Earth System Science Organization'India Meteorological Department (ESSO-IMD) operates 24X7 monitoring of satellite and Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) based weather monitoring over the potential cyclogenic zones of the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea for detecting the cyclogenesis. The commissioning of the high performance computing (HPC) system has provided opportunity to assimilate satellite radiance, Doppler Weather Radar (DWR), OCEANSAT (scatterometer, total precipitable water content) data etc. of global oceans in to the global (22Km grid scale)/meso-scale(9Km grid scale) forecast systems.

As and when the cyclone systems move in to the 500Km surveillance range of DWRs, identification of strong wind zones and pockets of heavy rainfall within the core cyclone area is carried out and their rapid changes are monitored on continuous basis. ESSO-IMD currently operates 5-Doppler Weather Radars (DWR) at Chennai, Machilipatnam, Visakhapatnam, Kolkata, Sriharikota on the east coast, 679 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) and 1292 Automatic Rain Gauges (ARG) covering all districts of India.

Effective emergency response mechanisms are institutionalized in all coastal states /districts to execute all necessary action related response and safe relocation of likely affected communities from all most vulnerable villages in a highly structured /organized manner so as to ensure the minimal loss of life. In order to facilitate such actions, all coastal villages are connected with all weather approach roads for executing safe relief operations, the Centre claimed.

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