Cyclone Lehar Hits India

This past week a weak cyclone hit India’s east coast as a weak cyclone depression. The cyclone – Cyclone Lehar was classified as a severe cyclone in the Bay of Bengal with winds over 100km/h but has since been downgraded. Unfavorable sea surface temperatures and shear for storm development did a good job on tearing up the storm apart before landfall. The storm made landfall as a tropical depression on Thursday, with winds of 60-70km/h at landfall. Evacuation precautions were taken by the India Meteorological Department because of the strength of the cyclone while it was over the Bay of Bengal but the only real threat that Lehar brought was flood threat. No significant damage was reported from the storm but some crops have been damaged and a few districts vulnerable to flooding in India’s Andhra Pradesh state have been affected by flooding.

Arctic air dominated over a good part of both Europe and the United States this week which brought minimal significant weather to the regions. Apart from significant snowfall associated with a trough of low pressure affecting the eastern seaboard of the United States earlier this week, active weather has been kept to a minimum. The next big weather event is likely to be a winter storm which will affect the northern states (MT, ND) and even southern Manitoba on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.