The cyclone ‘Dana’ formed over the east-central Bay of Bengal has taken severe form and is heading towards the Odisha coast to make landfall somewhere between Bhitarkanika and Dhamra, late tonight or early tomorrow morning. The track of the cyclone may slightly recurve to the west-southwest after the landfall, causing more rains in some of the interior and southern parts of Odisha. The wind speed of ‘Dana’ during the 5 to 6 hours of the landfall process will be about 125 km per hour, with widespread impact in the region.

Along with this, high tides are expected in the sea, and the storm is expected to bring down trees, electric poles, and thatched houses. The IMD has said there will be no ‘eye’ of the severe cyclone ‘Dana’. There will be heavy rainfall in various places for the next two days due to ‘Dana’. The severe cyclone is 190 km from Paradip and 220 km from Dhamra on the Odisha coast, and it is moving at a speed of 12 km per hour in the Bay of Bengal.

Kendrapara, Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Jagatsinghpur, and Bhadrak districts of Odisha will be worst affected by ‘Dana’ along with very heavy to extremely heavy rainfalls, while the 9 other districts of the state will also experience heavy rainfalls under its impact. All air services from and to Biju Patnaik International Airport at Bhubaneswar have been cancelled from 5 this evening till 9 tomorrow morning.

The Odisha government has issued a high alert for the next 48 hours. The administration has started shifting people living in low-lying areas to multipurpose cyclone centres, and so far about two lakh fifty thousand people have been shifted. The Chief Minister of Odisha Mohan Charan Mahi is reviewing preparedness for the severe cyclone with secretaries and a special relief commissioner at Bhubaneswar. Odisha High Court, schools, colleges, universities, and many government institutions have been closed till Friday. Leaves of doctors and government employees have been cancelled, while a large number of passenger trains have also been cancelled.

Fishermen have been banned from entering the sea. NDRF, ODRAF, and Fire Services teams have been deployed at strategic locations for prompt relief and rescue operations. A red alert has been issued for Kendrapara, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Bhadrak, and Balasore districts for tomorrow, while an orange alert has been issued for many other coastal and interior districts of the state.