Category India

On landfall day, Cyclone Arnab's outer bands are already lashing the Andhra Pradesh coast near Yanam, with rough seas, coastal erosion and heavy rain reported ahead of the IMD's forecast crossing by the forenoon of October 28.

Seventeen inmates held in a single cell at the Thekkampatti sub-jail in Tamil Nadu's Theni district faked epileptic seizures late on Monday night, attacked the guards who rushed in to help, and escaped. By Tuesday morning four had been arrested and 13 were still at large, with 17 special police teams, checkpoints across neighbouring districts and a public appeal for help.

The picture has sharpened in the last 24 hours. Arnab is now a severe cyclonic storm, its landfall point has narrowed to close to Yanam or Kakinada, 30,043 boats are back in Andhra harbours, 53 trains are cancelled, and Odisha has readied more than 1,700 shelters. This post covers only the new developments since our October 26 update, plus the brief context needed to understand them.

The Bay of Bengal system we tracked as a deep depression is now Cyclone Arnab — the first cyclone to form in the Bay in 2026. IMD's Monday bulletins fix its landfall window: the forenoon of October 28, between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam, at up to 140 kmph gusts. Here is what has changed since yesterday, what is confirmed, and how Andhra Pradesh and Odisha are preparing.