After Cyclone Arnab and Cyclone Murasu battered the east coast in quick succession, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is watching for a possible third system: its North Indian Ocean Extended Range Outlook for Cyclogenesis indicates an upper-air cyclonic circulation is likely to develop over the southeast Bay of Bengal and the adjoining Andaman Sea around November 11, Sambad English reported.

Source: Sambad English (IMD outlook)

Under the circulation’s influence, a low-pressure area is likely to form over the southeast Bay of Bengal around November 13. The IMD outlook puts only a low probability — between 1 and 33 per cent — on the system intensifying into a depression over the southwest Bay of Bengal around November 15, and there is no confirmation that it will become a cyclonic storm at all.

Source: Sambad English (IMD outlook)

Too early for a track, forecasters say

Odisha Connect, also reporting the IMD outlook, said the system’s intensity and direction remain uncertain. Weather experts quoted in the reports said November systems in the Bay of Bengal generally have a lower probability of approaching the Odisha coast, tend more often towards the Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh coasts, and a movement towards the Myanmar coast cannot be ruled out either. Meteorologist Jason Nicholls, cited by Sambad English, said conditions may become favourable for development next weekend but that it is too early to discuss a track because the low-pressure area has not yet formed.

Source: Odisha Connect (IMD outlook)

The outlook follows an unusually busy fortnight on the east coast: Cyclone Arnab made landfall on October 28 and Cyclone Murasu crossed near Ongole on November 3, together killing at least 11 people in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and causing crop and property losses running into thousands of crores, according to state assessments reported earlier. No cyclone warning is in force for the possible new system, and the IMD outlook is a watch notice, not a forecast of a storm.