The tropical storm Lehar is expected to be at west central Bay of Bengal by Wednesday and will be closer to the Andhra coast by Thursday. Our observations indicate a forecast wherein the tropical storm is expected to make landfall on Thursday night or Friday morning this week.
After emerging as a low pressure area in the Andaman Seas, the weather system rapidly intensified first into a depression on Saturday and then became a cyclonic storm on Sunday. The weather system now lies 1200 km east-southeast of Machilipatnam, 1150 km east southeast of Kakinada and 1050 km southeast of Kalingapatnam.
Cyclone Lehar is moving at a speed of more than 15 kmph and is expected to gain speed gradually in the next 24 hours. It's speed is much greater than that of Cyclone Helen, which was moving at a sluggish speed of less than 5 kmph.
Sea conditions are rough and Odisha has already asked its fishermen to return to the coast. According to an estimate, sea waves could be as high as 2.4 meters above normal, which could floods at areas situated as far as 10 km from the coast in Andhra Pradesh.
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