Cyclone Arnab Hits India, Spotlighting Extreme Weather Toll
WHO:
NASA - Cyclone Arnab was the first named storm of the North Indian Ocean’s cyclone season.
ABC News - K.J. Ramesh, former director general of the Indian Meteorological Department, said unusually high temperatures across the Bay of Bengal, a warm atmosphere and heat stored below the surface helped fuel Arnab.
ABC News - Akshay Deoras, a weather expert at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, said unusually warm waters helped Arnab strengthen rapidly.
ABC News - Anjal Prakash, a public policy professor at Flame University in Pune, India, discussed the economic effects of extreme weather and the need for climate-resilient infrastructure planning.
ABC News - Google, Adani and Airtel plan to invest $15 billion in a hyperscale data center in Visakhapatnam.
WHAT:
ABC News - Arnab came ashore with powerful winds and heavy rain, killing three people and inundating roughly 200,000 acres of cropland. Electricity poles were uprooted and roads blocked; heavy inland rainfall became the main threat as wind speeds weakened.
ABC News - Full damage estimates were expected to take days or weeks to calculate.
ABC News - Ramesh said, “A warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture, increasing the potential for intense rainfall.”
ABC News - Deoras said cyclones are natural weather patterns, but human-caused climate change can amplify their rainfall.
ABC News - India experienced extreme weather on 360 days in 2025; 4,421 people were killed and 17.41 million hectares (43.21 million acres) of cropland were affected, according to the Centre for Science and Environment.
ABC News - Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index ranks India among the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries and reports $170 billion in losses from 1995 to 2024.
ABC News - A 2025 XDI assessment of 228 Indian data centers projected that more than one in 10 would face high climate-change damage risks by 2050 under a high-emissions scenario; structural adaptations could substantially reduce those risks.
WHERE:
NASA - Arnab made landfall along the coast of Andhra Pradesh.
ABC News - The cyclone struck eastern India, threatening a coastline with substantial data-center investment; Visakhapatnam was in the path of its heavy rains.
ABC News - Unusually high Bay of Bengal temperatures helped fuel the storm.
WHY:
ABC News - Weather experts attributed Arnab’s strength and rainfall potential to unusually warm ocean waters and atmospheric conditions.
ABC News - India’s southwest monsoon was its weakest since 2015; experts linked sparse June-to-September rainfall to a strong El Niño combined with a warming climate. Several states declared droughts, with large deficits in southern and eastern India.
HOW:
ABC News - Prakash said flooding, heat, unreliable electricity and water scarcity pose overlapping risks to data centers, while damaged roads or substations can disrupt factories, supply chains and services beyond disaster areas.
ABC News - Prakash recommended strengthening electricity grids, flood-proofing roads and housing, improving crop insurance, and preparing business continuity plans for combined disruptions.
ABC News - Deoras said forecasting has improved for large weather systems, while local thunderstorms and flash floods remain difficult to predict.
(UPDATED October 29, 2026 05:59 UTC)
Cyclone Arnab, the first named storm of the North Indian Ocean season, came ashore along India’s Andhra Pradesh coast with powerful winds and heavy rain, killing three people and flooding about 200,000 acres of cropland. Unusually warm Bay of Bengal waters and a moisture-rich atmosphere helped the storm intensify and raised the risk of heavy rainfall, while weakening winds shifted the main threat inland; roads were blocked and electricity poles uprooted. The disaster highlights India’s exposure to extreme weather, with experts calling for climate-resilient infrastructure such as stronger power grids, flood-proof roads and better crop insurance.