Heavy rain left under Cyclone Arnab flooded several villages in Andhra Pradesh's Srikakulam district on Thursday, snapping road and rail connectivity and damaging standing crops, news agency IANS reported from Visakhapatnam.

Four rivers — the Vamsadhara, Nagavali, Mahendratanaya and Bahuda — were in spate after heavy local rain combined with massive flood inflows from neighbouring Odisha. After Odisha authorities opened the floodgates of the Baghalati Dam, the Bahuda rose sharply at Itchapuram, and officials issued a third danger warning for the river.

Floodwater from the Bahuda inundated a stretch of National Highway 16, the Kolkata-Chennai highway, bringing traffic to a complete halt. Several villages in the region were cut off, IANS said.

Rail traffic was hit as well: tracks were flooded at Tallabhadra in Sompeta mandal and at Jadupudi in Kanchili mandal, and South Coast Railway cancelled or diverted some trains through the flooded stretches in Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam districts.

Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) were carrying out rescue and relief operations in the flooded villages, and the rain and floods caused extensive damage to crops in the district.

The flooding is the latest impact of Arnab, which crossed the Andhra Pradesh coast near Yanam in the early hours of Wednesday as a very severe cyclonic storm and has since weakened into a depression. Awaaz Punjab has been reporting the storm's landfall and its aftermath across coastal Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.