It lashed the following places :
Mayabunder (Middle Andaman s) - 336 mm
Long Island (Andaman Group) - 336.8 mm
Car Nicobar (Nicobar Group) - 65.4 mm
Nancowry (Nicobar Group) - 14.8 mm
Hut Bay (Andaman Group) - 43.4 mm
These rain fall figures are for a 24 hr period, notice the almost a foot of rainfall in Middle Andamans. Normal life was significantly disrupted in Middle Andamans but no lives were lost.
Alarm bells started ringing by the 11th of October when satellite imagery of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JWTC) and other Independent Observers namely Eric Holthaus predicted it to be a significant storm, based on thermal imagery.
In a revolving system of nomenclature of cyclones, TC 02B was now named as Phailin (pronounced as Pi-lin) meaning a sapphire and a common thai name for a girl child.
By 12th Oct 2013 it was understood that Phailin had set its course and was following all the predictions made so far on its predicted track. It was intensifying, soaking energy from the warm ocean waters of the Bay of Bengal and had set its course for Gopalpur, a picturesque sandy coast on Odisha.
The Government of Odisha had requested help from the Ministry of Defence to keep choppers and troops ready for relief effort early on even while it was crossing Andamans. Having once suffered the onslaught of the 1999 cyclone, the state government of Odisha spared no effort in evacuation of all the coastal districts. Both Odisha and the state of Andhra Pradesh were on high alert. Andhra Pradesh was deemed to be particularly vulnerable as unlike Odisha where the Chief Minister had cancelled leave of all Government employees, Andhra was in turmoil, its power grid was powered down by striking government employees.
It was a tough time for Odisha, Phailin hit during the Durga Puja, a celebration of Goddess Durga held in each locality with colorfully erected pandals, temporary shrines to the Goddess. The pujas are meant to celebrate the homecoming of the Goddess. It was a sad sight to see the torn down, and wind tossed pandals. Perhaps all the effort and money spent on puja celebrations could have been spent on Cyclone preparedness & post cyclone relief ( more on this later.)
A significant Storm Surge was being predicted by all international observers, IMD too slowly started recognizing the threat of a surge in the coastal areas and in each subsequent advisory the storm surge predicted height was increased by IMD.
Figure 2. Storm
surge forecast for Tropical Cyclone Phailin, made on October 10, 2013. The peak
surge was predicted to be 87 cm (2.9'). Image source: IMD.
TRACKING PHAILIN:
I had started tracking this cyclone from the time it left Andamans on 9th of Oct, rain fall data of Andamans was procured. Both predicted & observed tracks were being observed. At Dhamra Port, my work place, we have a weather station. Weather, Wind Speed and Rainfall was observed till the Port Control was evacuated on 12th.
The other reliable real time data sources was from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) which had installed real time tide guage at the Gangavaram Port (and it could be observed that the storm surge had already resulted in a rise in sea levels from the predicted tide)
Both Gopalpur & Paradip Ports had a Automated Weather Station (AWS) installed by NIO and these proved very useful in getting real time data on Wind Speed at Gopalpur. At the time of posting this blog post www.inet.nio.org is down, possibly because Gopalpur AWS must have blown away by Phailin. The last record before this website was taken down was AWS record was stuck at +230kmph at 2240hrs on 12th October (Gopalpur), it was registering significant drops of air pressure, with 0.5 millibars of pressure drops every 20 mins, with the last pressure record at Gopalpur being 938mb (as far as I remember). This was because Phailin eye was estimated to have a pressure of 908mb and as the cyclone approached it was natural that a pressure drop would occur in the entire impact area. What was surprising was the rate at which pressure was dropping. A sure sign of high winds & accompanying rain.
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| Dhamra Port at 12th Oct 2013 1500hrs |
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| Dhamra Fishing Jetty 13th Oct 2013 1200 hrs |
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| Phailin as seen from Space |
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| Rains Lashing the Dhamra Fishing Jetty at 0100hrs 13th Oct 2013 |
AFTERMATH:
Thankfully there was no storm surge at Dhamra, I understand surge was restricted to a few places in Orissa & Andhra Pradesh.
But there was severe damage to the power structures, power was knocked off in 11 districts of Odisha. Mobile connectivity was also down completely at Dhamra for about 18 hours. Power returned only after 7 days. Bhubaneswar too bore a lot of damage and there was no power for almost a week. Over 5 lakh people were evacuated in Odisha, however several Districts were inundated. Balasore, Kendrapada bore the brunt of it, with several villages marooned. Odisha Government with National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) commenced a massive relief distribution effort with the help of the Indian Air Force. However with the recent rains and release of flood waters, flooding is expected to remain, Bhadrak was not flood affected at the time of reporting. But Bhadrak too has flooded, and the level of Rushikulya river (the river mouth beaches of which is a famous nesting site of the olive ridley turtles) is rising as I write this.
BETTER DISASTER MANAGEMENT
The fact that Odisha is flood affected cant be denied. But what can be done to minimize the damage? How better can we be forewarned?
How about...
Having an east coast port joint warning system with all the ports on east coast having real time weather gauges. I hope the web portal run by National Institute of Oceanography (www.inet.nio.org) is up and running soon, this portal could have the real time data of all the ports in the East Coast, including Bangladesh's ports.
Oceanography Projects taken up by the Department of Ocean Development (Government of India) the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai and the the National Institute of Oceanography should be integrated and linked to an objective of the need of Real Time Data and its analysis to warn us of impending extreme weather events.
Storm Hunter Planes /Hurricane Hunters which can gather weather information from right inside the cyclone. Maybe a Indo - Bangladesh initiative (two countries periodically affected by cyclones)
A Publicly available informative website with meteorological data from our armed force's numerous defence bases in peninsular India.
Deployment of Data Buoys in the Indian Ocean, manned jointly by our defence forces and NIO.
FLOOD & STORM SURGE FORECASTING
INCOIS has a Indian Ocean Forecasting System this could be integrated with the Weather Stations & Tide Gauges currently being manned by NIO
The Central Water Commission has a website with a flood forecasting system. This should be made more user friendly and should reach out to the stakeholders
Such steps will definitely help all the stakeholders including but not limited to district administrators, disaster relief workers, aid agencies, news agencies. Such steps would besides giving holistic information would help the internet public (the largest stakeholder) to understand the ground situation a lot better.
Lastly, the importance of social media especially twitter helped a great deal in getting ground information during Phailin. Live tweeting Phailin was a learning experience for me as I could learn so much about cyclones.
Twitter is like the Ham Radio of this Age, but then for Twitter one needs internet. During Phailin, mobile connectivity was the first to get affected before the power lines got torn off. But Radio works via short waves (SW), medium waves (MW) and frequency modulated (FM) radio waves. With our new fangled phone tablets (phablets) we assume that our connection to the rest of the world is unlimited but we forget that sometimes the old is more reliable than the new. We should have more community radios.
Ham Radio, Community Radio is the best medium of communication during a natural disaster, as even when power and mobile towers are down, the radio unit always works in isolation. We need to open up our policies on Community FM Radio.
To summarize,
Thankfully there was no storm surge at Dhamra, I understand surge was restricted to a few places in Orissa & Andhra Pradesh.
But there was severe damage to the power structures, power was knocked off in 11 districts of Odisha. Mobile connectivity was also down completely at Dhamra for about 18 hours. Power returned only after 7 days. Bhubaneswar too bore a lot of damage and there was no power for almost a week. Over 5 lakh people were evacuated in Odisha, however several Districts were inundated. Balasore, Kendrapada bore the brunt of it, with several villages marooned. Odisha Government with National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) commenced a massive relief distribution effort with the help of the Indian Air Force. However with the recent rains and release of flood waters, flooding is expected to remain, Bhadrak was not flood affected at the time of reporting. But Bhadrak too has flooded, and the level of Rushikulya river (the river mouth beaches of which is a famous nesting site of the olive ridley turtles) is rising as I write this.
BETTER DISASTER MANAGEMENT
The fact that Odisha is flood affected cant be denied. But what can be done to minimize the damage? How better can we be forewarned?
How about...
Having an east coast port joint warning system with all the ports on east coast having real time weather gauges. I hope the web portal run by National Institute of Oceanography (www.inet.nio.org) is up and running soon, this portal could have the real time data of all the ports in the East Coast, including Bangladesh's ports.
Oceanography Projects taken up by the Department of Ocean Development (Government of India) the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai and the the National Institute of Oceanography should be integrated and linked to an objective of the need of Real Time Data and its analysis to warn us of impending extreme weather events.
Storm Hunter Planes /Hurricane Hunters which can gather weather information from right inside the cyclone. Maybe a Indo - Bangladesh initiative (two countries periodically affected by cyclones)
A Publicly available informative website with meteorological data from our armed force's numerous defence bases in peninsular India.
Deployment of Data Buoys in the Indian Ocean, manned jointly by our defence forces and NIO.
FLOOD & STORM SURGE FORECASTING
INCOIS has a Indian Ocean Forecasting System this could be integrated with the Weather Stations & Tide Gauges currently being manned by NIO
The Central Water Commission has a website with a flood forecasting system. This should be made more user friendly and should reach out to the stakeholders
Such steps will definitely help all the stakeholders including but not limited to district administrators, disaster relief workers, aid agencies, news agencies. Such steps would besides giving holistic information would help the internet public (the largest stakeholder) to understand the ground situation a lot better.
Lastly, the importance of social media especially twitter helped a great deal in getting ground information during Phailin. Live tweeting Phailin was a learning experience for me as I could learn so much about cyclones.
Twitter is like the Ham Radio of this Age, but then for Twitter one needs internet. During Phailin, mobile connectivity was the first to get affected before the power lines got torn off. But Radio works via short waves (SW), medium waves (MW) and frequency modulated (FM) radio waves. With our new fangled phone tablets (phablets) we assume that our connection to the rest of the world is unlimited but we forget that sometimes the old is more reliable than the new. We should have more community radios.
Ham Radio, Community Radio is the best medium of communication during a natural disaster, as even when power and mobile towers are down, the radio unit always works in isolation. We need to open up our policies on Community FM Radio.
To summarize,
- We need integrated national multi agency natural disaster warning systems.
- We need real time weather, tide, gauges, to monitor severe weather systems remotely.
- We need a user friendly internet resource with multi agency data, which is regularly manned and updated with relevant information & reliable forecasts
- We need to open up our community radio policies, making them more easier for village community social units like village youth clubs, mahila sabhas etc. to apply for and operate community radio stations, during and after natural disasters.
