Severe cyclone Dana begins landfall on Odisha coast: IMD

Bhubaneswar: The landfall process of severe cyclonic storm Dana began on Thursday night and was expected to continue till Friday morning, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

The storm moved north-northwest at a speed of 15 kmph over the past six hours before making landfall between Bhitarkanika in Kendrapara district and Dhamra in Bhadrak district, with wind speeds of around 110 kmph, a senior IMD official said.

“The landfall started with the entry of the outer cloud mass of the system. When the centre of the system reaches land, wind speeds are expected to reach 120 kmph,” Umashankar Das, a senior scientist at the Regional Meteorological Centre in Bhubaneswar, told PTI.

Das noted that the landfall process will last for about four to five hours till Friday morning.

Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi informed that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had inquired about the Odisha government’s preparedness to handle the impending storm.