April Cyclones in Indian Subcontinent – Historical Facts

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Did you know there has been no depressions that has formed either in the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea over the last 50 years.  What is the probability of an April Cyclone reaching the Tamil Nadu shores.   Read more for such interesting facts.

April & May are part of the pre monsoon season when the cyclone season slowly picks up after pretty much quite March.  Regular readers of this blog might be aware that only about 7 organized disturbances have ever occurred over both Bay of Bengal & Arabian Sea in the last about 125 years of data available with the RMC, Chennai.

  • Over the last 50 years April has seen only  9 cyclones & severe cyclones have formed over Arabian Sea & Bay of Bengal.

All_years

  • Strangely the previous 50 years has seen 25 systems during April, is it a case of changing climatic conditions influencing the cyclogenesis over the Bay we don’t know.

1915_64

  • April is the only month where the instances of Very Severe Cyclone is higher than Cyclones effectively confirming the theory Pre Monsoon Cyclones have the highest probability of becoming intense cyclones.  April has seen 7 Very Severe Cyclones. Only 2 Cyclones formed during April over the last 50 years, one each in Bay and Arabian Sea

Cyclone

  • Not so surprisingly 6 of the 7 very severe cyclones have hit the Myanmar / Bangladesh Coasts.

Severe_cyclone

  • Tamil Nadu has seen only one cyclone hit its shores during the last 50 years during the year 1966 when a cyclone crossed the shores near Pondicherry though this was during the cusp of April & May because the cyclone formed on 28th April and made landfall on 1st May.

TamilNadu_Cyclone

 

  • Prior to that the year 1939 saw the previous cyclone hit the Tamil Nadu shores so that’s a probability of may be once in 40 years.

TN_Alltime

  • Similarly of the 9 systems only 3 have formed in the first fortnight thereby confirming the season changes around the start of the Tamil New Year.