Bureau keeping a close eye on Bengal storm: official

Thursday, 14 October 2010 18:10 Myo Thein

Rangoon (Mizzima) – Burma needs to keep a close watch for the next 24 hours on a depression in the Bay of Bengal, the national weather bureau chief in Naypyidaw said.

Meteorology and Hydrology Department deputy director Chin Kyaw said his team needed to watch the storm even though it was not currently moving towards Burma.

“According to the observations made today at 3 p.m. the current position of the depression about 200 miles (320 kilometres) southeast of Gopalpul [in Orrissa State]. We can’t say for certain whether the direction will change … We forecast that it will cross the [Indian] coastline in either the afternoon or the evening tomorrow,” he said. “If its current course remains unchanged … it will cross the coastline near Gopapul.”

A similar depression developed in the mid-west of the Bay of Bengal last week and caused incessant heavy rain daily in Arakan, Irrawaddy, Rangoon, Sagaing, Mandalay divisions and across other parts of western Burma.

The depression caused flooding and landslides and in Arakan cut communication lines, he said.

Fishing trawlers had received storm warnings since yesterday (October 13), a member of the Offshore Fishing Federation said.

“First we took shelter from the storm that hit in the past few days and now we’ve got this storm warning again, just as we were preparing to set out to sea for fishing. Some trawlers have left and we contacted them over radio phones [telling them] to take shelter from storm at nearby places,” he told Mizzima.