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The strongest new storm to hit Myanmar in more than a decade is forecast to make landfall near the Bangladesh border on Sunday, raising the prospect of a major humanitarian disaster.
The storm, Cyclone Mocha, formed in the southern part of the Bay of Bengal on Thursday and has started to make landfall in western Myanmar while moving northeast on Friday, with heavy rain, strong winds and storm surge forecast to continue until Sunday, according to the Disaster Warning Global. and Coordination System.
Myanmar and Bangladesh have begun deploying thousands of volunteers and ordering evacuations from low-lying areas, Agence France-Presse reported, in areas home to some of the world’s poorest people, which are particularly vulnerable to increasingly severe weather events.
The storm’s sustained winds of 60 miles per hour, recorded Thursday night, are expected to strengthen to 110 mph by the time it makes landfall, forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said.
If the forecast holds, Mocha will be the strongest storm to make landfall in Myanmar since Cyclone Giri, which in 2010 produced winds of 143 mph, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s historical cyclone track. The storm killed at least 45 people in Myanmar.
Cyclones are very destructive. The term “cyclone” refers to a type of tropical cyclone – an umbrella term for all such storms, such as hurricanes and typhoons – that occur in the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea, located in the northern part of the Indian Ocean.
Scientists say climate change helps intensify storms because unusually warm ocean temperatures provide more energy to fuel tropical cyclones.
Cyclone Mocha comes on the heels of a heat wave that has been killing Southeast Asia for weeks. In April, Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, reached 105.1 degrees, the highest temperature in six decades. The capital of Laos, Vientiane, reached 108.5 degrees on Saturday, the hottest temperature on record. Thailand has also recorded triple digit temperatures.
The Bay of Bengal, in the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, has been experiencing major storms for a long time. Cyclone Amphan killed more than 80 people in India and Bangladesh in 2020. In 2017, Cyclone Mora tore through Sri Lanka and the homes of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Myanmar, killing at least 194 people.
In 2008, Cyclone Nargis became the second deadliest tropical cyclone on record and the deadliest in Myanmar, killing more than 135,000 people. In 2007, Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing more than 3,000 people.
In Myanmar, the risk of devastation is compounded by the ongoing civil war, which has affected some 1.8 million people across the country, with areas south of the Bangladeshi border a zone of active fighting and home to several large refugee camps.
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