Cyclone ‘Fani’ is likely to hit Gopalpur and Chandbali, south of Puri in Odisha, on Friday, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said Wednesday. The state authorities have advised tourists to leave the pilgrim town and ordered closure of all educational institutions in the state.
The IMD has issued its ‘yellow warning’ for the Odisha coast and suggested total suspension of fishing activities, extensive evacuation from coastal areas and diversion or suspension of rail and road traffic.
A yellow warning indicates severely bad weather, warning people who are at risk to take preventive action.
The name of this cyclone was suggested by Bangladesh and loosely translates to “the hood of a snake”, according to Moneycontrol.
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The practice of naming storms (tropical cyclones) began in order to help in the quick identification of storms in warning messages, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), because names are presumed to be far easier to remember than numbers and technical terms.
The WMO has devised a mechanism where countries submit a list of names from time to time, according to India Today, and names of cyclones are chosen from this list.
For tropical cyclones developing in the North Indian Ocean, countries like India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan and Thailand send their names to the regional tropical cyclone committee.