In Kakinada’s Bombay Katta area, four people who had left for work in the morning spent the night trapped by floodwater. Seawater and heavy rain had cut off their accommodation, and there was no way out until they called the police. Officers reached them and brought them out safely, according to a district police statement. It was a small rescue in a very large storm, and it says something useful about this cyclone: the danger on Wednesday morning was not only the wind. It was the water, rising quietly around ordinary routines.
The Cyclone Arnab landfall began in the early hours of Wednesday along the Andhra Pradesh and Yanam coasts. The Indian Express reported that the storm crossed near Narsapur in West Godavari district at around 3 am, while the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in its 5.30 am update that the landfall process was still continuing. The storm, the IMD said, was practically stationary close to the coast, with its centre about 30 km east of Narsapur, 45 km south-southwest of Yanam and 70 km south-southwest of Kakinada.
## How the Cyclone Arnab landfall unfolded
This was not a storm that rushed ashore. It crawled. The IMD said the very severe cyclonic storm was moving northwestwards at just 3 kmph in the hours before landfall, and its northern spiral band had already pushed inland while the centre still sat near the coastline. Maximum sustained winds were **125 to 135 kmph**, gusting to 150 kmph, the IMD said, and those winds were expected to persist for two to three hours before easing.
That slow pace is the detail that explains the rest of the morning. A fast-moving cyclone hits hard and leaves. A near-stationary one parks over the coast and pours rain on the same districts for hours. By Wednesday morning, Kannuripalem in Anakapalli district had recorded **261.5 mm** of rain, followed by 259.74 mm at a school in Vizianagaram district and 259.06 mm at the 16th Police Battalion area in Visakhapatnam, the IMD figures cited by The Week showed. Several places in Anakapalli, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Konaseema districts reported more than 200 mm.
On Tuesday evening, as we reported, nearly 89,000 people on the Kakinada coast were being moved to shelters ahead of the storm: [Cyclone Arnab Landfall Nears, 89,000 Evacuated](https://auindia.in/news/cyclone-arnab-landfall-nears-89000-evacuated). By Wednesday morning, the Indian Express put the number evacuated at more than 84,000, with the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority warning of gale-force winds up to 135 kmph in Kakinada, Konaseema and East Godavari districts. The state also converted 609 schools into rehabilitation centres, which were accommodating 854 people as of 5.50 am on Wednesday, officials told the Times of India.
## Trees down, power lines snapped, roads blocked
The damage so far is the familiar cyclone catalogue, but the scale in one district stands out. Nearly 6,000 electricity poles were uprooted in Konaseema district alone, the Times of India reported, knocking out power infrastructure across the area. Trees came down on the road from Gollapalem towards Draksharamam in Kakinada district, and a private travel bus went off the roadside before police cleared it. In Visakhapatnam, a tree fell near Andhra University’s College of Engineering for Women, high tides battered RK Beach, and Beach Road and Seethammadhara saw blockages.
No fresh casualties from the landfall itself had been reported by Wednesday morning, officials said, and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu reviewed the situation and directed officials to clear fallen trees, restore power once conditions improve, and keep tanks and canals from overflowing. That is a better outcome than the forecast feared, and it owes something to the evacuation effort that began two days earlier. It also owes something to luck: the worst winds hit a stretch of coast that had largely been emptied the night before.
Transport is still disrupted. The cancellations that began on Tuesday, covered in our earlier report on [61 trains cancelled](https://auindia.in/news/cyclone-arnab-trains-cancelled-andhra-coast-oct-28), had climbed to 95 by Tuesday evening, according to the Indian Express tracker citing the Railways. Passengers should check live train status before travelling, since more cancellations and diversions remain possible on routes through the affected districts.
## Odisha next, and the rain is not finished
The storm’s next act is inland. The IMD has issued a red alert for extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places in Odisha’s Ganjam, Gajapati, Rayagada and Nabarangpur districts, with winds of 60 to 70 kmph gusting to 80 kmph. Other southern Odisha districts are under an orange alert, and the system is expected to move northwestwards and then north-northwestwards towards Chhattisgarh and the Odisha region. Heavy rain is likely to continue over Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday and Thursday, state officials said.
When the storm formed on Monday, the warning was a track on a map, as we reported in [Cyclone Arnab Forms, Red Alert for Andhra, Odisha](https://auindia.in/news/cyclone-arnab-forms-red-alert-andhra-odisha-oct-28). By Wednesday morning it was a stalled, rain-heavy system sitting on the coast. The wind will ease first. The water will take longer, and for districts from Anakapalli to Malkangiri, the next 48 hours will be about flooded roads, snapped power lines and swollen drains rather than wind speed. The question now is not how strong Arnab was at landfall. It is how quickly the water drains once it finally moves on.