Cyclone Nisarga: Mumbai may witness its first cyclone in recorded history

File image of Mumbai's Marine Drive

As Cyclone Nisarga approaches the coast of Maharashtra, thousands have been evacuated while NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) teams have been deployed.

The capital city of Mumbai, along with Palghar, Thane, and Raigad are on Red Alert. There is a warning of flash floods in Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri, Palghar, Thane, Mumbai and Nashik.

Municipal authorities are on their guard, taking stock and readying shelters. Meanwhile, no flights will be allowed to land or take off at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport till 7pm today in view of the approaching storm.

If Cyclone Nisarga does make a landfall in Mumbai, it will be the first every cyclone to do so in recorded history, The Times of India has reported.

The financial capital has never been hit by a cyclone in the month of June in documented history. Cyclone Phyan in 2009 was the nearest a cyclone has gotten to Mumbai, but ultimately it never made landfall in the city.

The story about the 1882 Bombay Cyclone, which purportedly killed 1 lakh people is shown to be an urban legend by scientist Adam Sobel.

The reason for this is the location of Mumbai and the weather dynamics of the Arabian Sea. Even though the Arabian Sea sees one to two cyclonic formations every year – far less than the Bay of Bengal – they tend to go west towards Oman and the Gulf of Aden.

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If not west, then they head north towards Gujarat, as with the 1998 cyclone that killed at least 10,000 people, or Cyclone Vayu which hit the Saurashtra coast last year in June.

Sridhar Balasubramanian, a professor of mechanical engineering at IIT Bombay, told the newspaper that Easterlies (winds which move from east to west) nudge the cyclonic system away from the north-western coast.

Besides, a pre-monsoon high pressure formation along the western coast, also acts as a barrier. So, even when a strong cyclone forms in the Arabian Sea, it is likely to weaken as it approaches land.

Of land, storm systems have been forming near Kerala, but do not intensify due to friction provided by land. According to the report, the Nisarga Cyclone system also formed near Kerala due to high sea surface temperature, weak wind shears and monsoon westerlies, which provided moisture. Whether it will intensify further, and by what magnitude, remains to be seen.

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“Generally, the dynamics near Mumbai are not conducive for cyclones to thrive,” Balasubramanian told the newspaper.

However, a 2015 study from Princeton shows rise in cyclonic activity in the Arabian Sea. In 2019, five of eight Indian Ocean cyclones were formed in the Arabian Sea – the most since 1902.