The Indian coast braces for impact today as Tropical Cyclone Yaas brings flooding rain and a dangerous storm surge to areas along the Odisha coast, south of Balasore.
The government is currently evacuating more than a million people in the area, just a week after Tropical Cyclone Tauktae in the northwest, which killed more than 100 people.
With such an active Tropical Cyclone season so far, along with the current COVID-19 crisis, business leaders in India are facing the difficult challenge of managing the weather and operations at once. Here’s how the forecast could impact your business and how you can get ahead of the weather.
Forecast for Tropical Cyclone Yaas
Tropical Cyclone Yaas made landfall around 10:30am south of Balasore, Odisha as a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm, with maximum sustained winds of 120 km/h. Winds have since weakened to 100 km/h near the center as it travels over land, and further weakening continues tonight into tomorrow. As Cyclone Yaas tracks northwestward over Odisha, then Jharkhand, maximum winds near the center of Yaas will weaken to 75 km/h by late this evening, then 45 km/h by dawn Thursday.
The peak time of concern for business leaders will be from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning, as the storm is the strongest. The cyclone will then dissipate by midday tomorrow.
Business Impact of Yaas
For businesses like Tomorrow.io customer Indigrid, the storm can put operations severely at risk due to high winds and flooding anticipated in the area.
IndiGrid is one of the largest platforms for operational transmission assets in India, with 20 transmission lines of ~5,800 km, four substations of 7,735 MVA capacity, and manages assets across 13 states in India – including the areas that will be most impacted by Yaas.
For specific towers in their coverage area, the maximum sustained winds put them most at risk for outages. In addition to expected high winds, the team at Indigrid also has to manage torrential downpours and frequent lightning from the storm. With rainfall amounts of 10-20 cm, with locally higher amounts possible along specific tower segments, flooding is also a risk.
With the Tomorrow.io platform, the team can immediately see exactly which areas are most at risk to focus response teams quickly and efficiently to get power back up and running. This enables the team to restore power quickly to all of their customers.
“An extended power outage for our stakeholders during the COVID-19 lockdown would be devastating. Without Tomorrow.io, we would have been waiting and reacting to bad news, but instead, we knew exactly what was going on and what to expect the whole time. We knew which locations and power types to focus on so we could prepare, mobilize, and ensure power for our valued stakeholder.” – Satish Talmale, Chief Operating Officer at IndiGrid
