Posted by JAC on 4/16/2009, 2:38 pm, in reply to "Bijli forms from 94B in the Bay of Bengal"

Cyclone 1B has now strengthened into a tropical storm in the Bay of Bengal and has been renamed "Bijli." India's northeast coast is the first to be threatened by the Cyclone as it continues to strengthen and Bangladesh is already issuing alerts. Bijli's sustained winds had strengthened to 45 knots (52 mph) as of April 16, at 09:00 UTC (5 a.m. EDT), and the storm was near 17.6 degrees north latitude and 86.2 degrees east longitude. That's about 330 nautical miles south-southwest of Kolkata, India. Bijli is moving north-northeast near 6 knots (7 mph). Bijli is creating 14 foot high waves in the Bay of Bengal, and tropical storm-force winds (35 mph) extend up to 55 miles from its center. Bijli continues to strengthen slowly, and India's coast is now expected to experience the western fringes of the storm as it passes and heads toward Bangladesh. The image above was created using rainfall data collected when the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite flew over tropical cyclone Bijli (01B) on April 14, at 18:05 UTC (2:05 p.m. EDT). TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA that can estimate rainfall in a tropical cyclone from its vantage point in space. The storm was still called "01B" when data for this image was taken, as it was too weak to be classified as a tropical storm. This image shows 01B's rainfall in blue and yellow, which represents between 0 and 20 millimeters of rainfall per hour (.78 inch/hour). It was later upgraded to tropical storm. According to Reuters news on April 16, ports in Bangladesh have been advised to post cautionary signals and fishing boats and trawlers have been warned not to go deep into the Bay of Bengal. The storm was still quite a distance from Bangladesh, some 710 miles (1.135 kilometers) southwest its main Cittagong Port, but they're preparing now. Residents of Bangladesh are familiar with tropical cyclones, as in 2007, Cyclone Sidr killed almost 3,500 people. Bijli is forecast to intensify slowly as it continues to track over warm sea surface temperatures and under low vertical wind shear (strong wind shear can tear a storm apart) before it makes landfall near the Bangladesh/Burma (Myanmar) border. Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center