Cyclone Amphan: Some of history's deadliest storms that were formed in Bay of Bengal

Cyclone Amphan which is rapidly approaching the east coast of India, is anticipated to make the landfall in the middle of West Bengal and Bangladesh on Wednesday at around 4 pm.

It is the most powerful cyclone in Bay of Bengal after 1999, storm that wreaked havoc on Odisha and killed around 9,000 people.

Amphan has slightly lost its ferocity after it started propelling towards the coast, be that as it may, it will still hit the coast as extremely severe cyclonic storm. As maintained by glossary of the Indian weather department, an extremely severe cyclonic storm has a wind speed of between 167 kmph and 221 kmph.

Amphan is likely to bring about widespread damage in inland areas, including flooding of land mass and distruction of huts.

Officials have moved out 42 million people from low land areas in Odisha and West Bengal, the two states which will be gravely hit by the super cyclone. Amphan’s effects will also be noticed in Assam, Meghalaya and Sikkim as it will move north-northwards on Thursday and Friday.

A storm is categorized as a super cyclone when wind speed becomes more than 222 kmph.

Some of the most dangerous storms in history have formed in the Bay of Bengal, inclusive of one in 1970 that claimed the lives of half a million people in what is today Bangladesh.

list of Cyclones: 

* Around 1,38,000 lost their lives in Bangladesh in 1991 in a tidal wave caused by a cyclone.

* In 1999 in Odisha, 10,000 people were killed by a cyclone.

* In 2007, Cyclone Sidr killed around 4,000 people in southern Bangladesh.

* Then in 2008 Cyclone Nargis, which devastated razed Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta to the grounds, killed about 140,000 people.