Cyclone Vayu has dissipated earlier than anticipated and will not make landfall over Gujarat, a senior weather department official said. Vayu was expected to make landfall by midnight Monday, according to an India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) assessment late on Sunday. “It has already become a ‘depression’ and by midnight will cross over the Gujarat coast as a ‘well marked low,’ said Madhavan Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences. While this would still bring in rains and winds - and fishermen have been warned to stay away - it effectively meant that Vayu no longer posed a threat to Gujarat.
A ‘well marked low’ refers to a state when a tropical storm has lost is strength and no longer possesses an ‘eye’ or a centre, which is the hallmark of a cyclone. “For a landfall, the storm has to at least be a depression. Forecasting the track of this cyclone was tricky because there were complications posed by the monsoon pressure systems,” said Rajeevan. Now that Vayu was over, the monsoon could continue its journey along the western coast.
