Possible heavy rains and gale as Mahasen hits states

Agartala, May 16: With cyclone Mahasen likely to hit

and

tonight, the states may witness heavy rains and a gale of 50-60 Kmph, the met office said here. "There is likely to be heavy rain in the state in the next two days with wind blowing in 50 to 60 Km speed per hour," Met Director Dilip Saha told PTI.

"The effects of the cyclone might slightly be felt in southern and eastern part of the state from tonight. We have not find anything to sound an alert," Saha said. The state disaster management department, however, alerted people of Kanchanpur and Gandaceherra subdivisions of northern and eastern part of the state and Amarpur and Sabroom subdivisions of Southern Tripura about the cyclone, official sources said.

The cyclone had hit Bangladesh earlier in the day and is likely to move northeasterly further and may cross Chittagong-Cox's Bazar coast during the day. The Sabroom border in southern Tripura is located about 75 Km from the Bay of Bengal in Chittagong division of the neighbouring country.

An alert has also been sounded across Assam as cyclone 'Mahasen' is likely to hit the north-eastern states tonight. All boats and ferry services on Brahmaputra have been closed for the next three days and fishermen have been directed not to venture out to the river.

A control room has been set up in the district headquarters though no evacuation was required at the moment as the intensity was expected to be less. South Assam or Barak Valley was expected to experience the cyclone with other parts of the state expected to receive heavy to moderate rainfall, sources at the Regional Meteorological Centre at Guwahati said.

The storm had formed over the Andaman and Nicobar islands on May 10 and was moving in north-west direction but on May 14, it started moving towards north-east, Deputy Director General of Meteorology Mahesh Kumar Gupta said.

The wind was moving at a speed of 55 to 65 km per hour and was likely to affect Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and south Assam with heavy rains likely in these areas during the next 48 hours, he said. Rains and thundershowers were also likely in some other parts of Assam, he added.

Heavy rains lashed Meghalaya early today as cyclone 'Mahasen' crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh's low-lying coast but officials said there was no direct threat to humans or agriculture in the state.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh and Myanmar were ordered to move to safety as the cyclone barrelled towards low-lying coastal areas in these two countries.

With inputs from PTI.

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