Cyclone Murasu made landfall early Tuesday along the coast of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, according to officials. It comes days after Cyclone Arnab made landfall along India's southern coast, leaving five people dead. In an update, the India Meteorological Department said the landfall process of severe Cyclonic Storm Murasu commenced over south coastal Andhra Pradesh at 1 am local time (1930GMT Monday). “The landfall process continues.
In the forward sector of the cyclone, part of a wall cloud entered into land and the eye is touching the coast. Severe Cyclonic Storm Murasu over West central Bay of Bengal close to South Andhra Pradesh coast,” the weather department wrote on the US social media platform X. The landfall brought heavy rainfall accompanied by winds reaching speeds of up to 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had directed officials to prepare for the cyclone.
He said estimates suggest that due to the impact of the cyclone, 6,000 to 8,000 electricity poles may be damaged, posing a “severe threat to power supply.” Authorities have ordered the evacuation of people from low-lying areas to safe locations. In neighboring Odisha state, authorities shifted 151,434 people to safe places as the government stepped up preparedness measures in vulnerable areas to mitigate the potential impact of the cyclone.
Anadolu Agency reports Cyclone Murasu's landfall in Andhra Pradesh, the evacuations and the expected damage to power lines, and notes that Cyclone Arnab killed five people days earlier. It describes a severe cyclone, the second to hit the same coast in a week, and never tells the reader that warming makes intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.
Leaves out the climate link
Serious
“The landfall brought heavy rainfall accompanied by winds reaching speeds of up to 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour.”
Why this matters
These words give the cyclone's heavy rainfall and 110 km/h winds as plain weather facts. No sentence in the article links the storm, or the second severe cyclone in a week on this coast, to a warming climate.
The impression it gives
A reader takes Murasu and Arnab as a run of bad weather with no wider cause, and nothing suggests that storms like these are becoming more severe.
The context
Human-caused warming has made intense tropical cyclones and heavy rainfall more frequent or more severe. The article reports a severe cyclonic storm hitting days after a deadly one and never says so, even in a single line.
How we know
Checked against the whole articleIt never uses the words “climate” and “warming”.
On the recordThat warming has made hot extremes, heavy rainfall, agricultural and ecological drought, fire weather and intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
Elsewhere in the article“days after Cyclone Arnab made landfall along India's southern coast, leaving five people dead”
The landfall brought heavy rainfall and winds of up to 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour. Climate change is making intense cyclones and heavy rainfall like this more frequent and more severe.