It was a huge cyclone, this cyclone Fani. That's the name of the cyclone, Fani.
So this violent, very violent, cyclone hit the eastern part of India, mostly Odisha, this week. It made a landfall on Friday, 3 May. Now what is a landfall? Landfall means when the cyclone hit land. Before that, it was in the sea. So the cyclone started somewhere in the Bay of Bengal and travelled all the way to hit the coast around Odisha.
What really is a cyclone? Well, a cyclone is nothing but high speed wind. When wind travels at super speeds, it becomes a cyclone. A slow speed wind will make the wet clothes on the clothesline swirl like flags, make papers fly away. But a cyclone is so violent that it can make cars and even trains fly away. Yes!
But not all cyclones are that bad. Category 1 cyclones are mild. Their speed is around 120 - 150 kilometre per hour (kmph). I mean that speed should be okay. People drive their cars at that speed at times! You don't try it though! It's for experts, ONLY! Okay? Okay.
The most violent cyclones speeds around or more than 252 kmph. These are Category 5 cyclones.
Cyclone Fani moved at a speed of 205 kmph. It fell in Category 3.
It caused serious destruction. But hey! You know what? We need to give standing ovation to the disaster management team and the volunteers who worked overtime and saved one million …ONE MILLION people from this cyclone. Yes! You read it!
When they came to know that this cyclone was going to make a landfall, they got down to work and the first thing they did was shift people away from areas where the cyclone was going to hit the most. So, 1.2 million people were shifted to safer places within 24 hours. Wow!! A loud applause for the disaster management team and also for the volunteers!
This is the first time that India has seen such smartness in saving people from a disaster. Otherwise people are left to their fate, disaster management department is slow, and too many lives are lost.
These high speed winds are called by different names in the different places. They are called hurricanes if they form over the Atlantic Ocean or eastern Pacific Ocean. They are called typhoons if they occur over Northwest Pacific Ocean.
So these same kind of storms are called hurricane in America, typhoon in Japan and cyclone in India.
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