In brief
Cyclone Murasu hit India’s eastern coast on Tuesday, uprooting trees, toppling electricity poles and flooding low‑lying areas in Andhra Pradesh. Authorities have evacuated around 30,000 residents and reported no deaths to date. The storm, the second in a week to hit the region, has prompted the Indian government to deploy disaster‑relief teams.
Cyclone Murasu struck India’s eastern coast on Tuesday, uprooting trees and flooding low‑lying areas in Andhra Pradesh, reports Al Jazeera.
The IMD said the severe cyclonic storm made landfall near Ongole in Prakasam district at about 1 am local time (19:30 GMT Monday), bringing heavy to very heavy rain across several districts through the day.
Prakhar Jain, managing director of the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority, told Reuters that no deaths or injuries had been reported so far and that some trees and electricity poles were uprooted. Thousands of trees were felled, hundreds of power poles damaged, and fishing boats wrecked in Prakasam and Bapatla districts, PTI reported.
In the wake of the storm, authorities began evacuating people on Monday and plan to relocate roughly 30,000 residents to safety, Jain said.
"This is the most dangerous cyclone we have witnessed in the last 14 years," Krishnamma, a fisherman from Kothapatnam in Prakasam district, told PTI. He said about 400 families from his village had been moved out before the storm hit.
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah posted on X that he had spoken to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu about the cyclone’s impact, assuring national and state disaster response teams were already on the ground.
IMD forecasts predict Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to its south will be worst hit. Heavy rain is also expected in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Odisha. The second cyclone in a week followed Cyclone Arnab, which caused heavy damage earlier in the month.
Some reports have cited wind speeds of 100–110 km/h for Murasu and described the storm as “severe,” but no reliable source confirming those figures has been retrieved. Accordingly, that information remains unverified at this time.
