Tropical Cyclone Sidr has made landfall in western Bangladesh as a mighty Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds. Sidr is the second strongest cyclone to make landfall in Bangladesh since reliable record keeping began in 1877. The only stronger storm was the 1991 Bangladesh Cyclone, which struck eastern Bangladesh as a Category 5 cyclone. The 30 foot storm surge of that storm killed at least 140,000 people.
Figure 1. Image of Tropical Cyclone Sidr as a Category 4 storm (928 mb) with 155 mph winds. Image taken at 4:57am EST 11/15/07. The cyclone made landfall in the Sundarbans Forest area of Bangladesh, just east of Calcutta, India. Image credit: Navy Research Lab.
Sidr's storm surge The big killer in Bangladesh cyclones is the storm surge. . . .Of critical importance is the timing of landfall with respect to high tide, since there is a 1.5 meter (5 foot) difference between low and high tide in western Bangladesh.. . . Sidr made landfall about halfway between low and high tide. Thus, Bangladesh did have a little luck, as the storm tide could have been about 2-3 feet higher had Sidr hit at high tide.
. . . The portion of coast likely to receive the highest storm surge levels of 20-25 feet is virtually unpopulated. However, storm surge levels of 10-20 feet are still likely to affect areas with a population of at least a million, to the east of the Sundarbans forest, and inland from the forest. The last major cyclone to hit western Bangladesh occurred in November 1988. This Category 3 cyclone with 125 mph winds had a 5-10 foot storm surge, and killed 2,000 people.
Hurricane shelters in Bangladesh Since the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970, . . . killed an estimated 350,000-550,000 people, Bangladesh embarked on program to build concrete cyclone shelters . . . The warning system in Bangladesh is fairly effective at notifying the population of an approaching cyclone, but many residents choose not to evacuate to the shelters, . . . these shelters can accommodate less than 3% of the population of western Bangladesh . . .
A Bangladesh cyclone shelter built after the devastating 1970 cyclone. Image credit: Harry M. Jol, professor at University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.
The Bangladesh newspaper is already reporting that 300 fishing boats have sunk in Sidr, with 1,000 fishermen missing. . . . Sidr has the potential to kill several thousand people in Bangladesh. Also of concern is India. The eastern portion of the Calcutta metropolis will receive winds near hurricane force, and these winds could cause major destruction of poorly built housing. Flash flooding from heavy rains could also affect both India and Bangladesh.
Normally, I would just post small excerpts from Dr Masters' blog. However, due to the extraordinary nature of this event, I have copied very large portions of it to here today.
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