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Graphic shows path of Cyclone Nisarga.
GN40250EN

WEATHER

Cyclone lashes Covid-ravaged Mumbai

By Jordi Bou

June 3, 2020 - The first cyclone to hit India’s financial capital in 70 years has stoked fears that a city already struggling with Covid-19 infections could see its healthcare system further overwhelmed.

Cyclone Nisarga made landfall Wednesday south of India's financial capital of Mumbai, with a storm surge threatening to flood beaches and low-lying slums as city authorities struggled to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

In the state capital Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, India's largest stock exchange and more than 20 million residents, high winds whipped skyscrapers and ripped apart shanty houses near the beach.

Some 100,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas in Maharashtra and neighboring Gujarat, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Both states are already among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Nisarga comes just two weeks after Cyclone Amphan tore through the Bay of Bengal on India’s east coast and battered West Bengal state, killing more than 100 people in India and neighbouring Bangladesh.

Such storms are less common in the Arabian Sea than on India's east coast, usually form later in the year and do so over a longer period. But Nisarga may represent the ways in which the warming of oceans due to climate change is already altering lives, experts said.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 03/06/2020; STORY: Graphic News
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