Cyclone Arnab: Why Did the Bay of Bengal's First Storm of 2026 Arrive So Late?
On October 25, a storm named Arnab (pronounced Or-nab) spun up in the Bay of Bengal. Three days later it made landfall on the Andhra Pradesh and Yanam coast, between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam, with sustained winds of 130 kilometers per hour. What makes Arnab unusual is not just its strength but its timing: it is the first named storm of the 2026 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, in a basin that typically produces named cyclones in April or May.
How strong was it?
When the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite captured Arnab at night on October 26 (1:42 a.m. India time on October 27), the India Meteorological Department put its sustained winds at about 140 kilometers per hour. At landfall early on October 28, winds were 130 kilometers per hour, which IMD classifies as a very severe cyclonic storm, roughly equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The landfall zone between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam is heavily settled, with large cities, farmland and fishing communities. Arnab uprooted trees, inundated crops and homes, stalled fishing and disrupted transport and power networks, according to news reports. Authorities evacuated tens of thousands of people from vulnerable coastal areas before it hit; the Associated Press reported three deaths.
Why so late in the year?
One part of the answer sits thousands of kilometers away in the Pacific. Arnab arrived in the midst of an El Nino, the climate pattern of warmer-than-normal water in parts of the equatorial Pacific that returns roughly every two to seven years. El Nino reshuffles winds and rainfall patterns globally, and in the Bay of Bengal, researchers have found, it is associated with a quieter cyclone basin: fewer storms, and weaker ones, in El Nino years.
That suppression helps explain a season whose first named storm waited until late October. The Bay of Bengal remains one of the world's most dangerous cyclone basins when storms do form, because warm shallow water feeds them and low-lying, densely populated coasts receive them, which is why the late-season arrival still triggered mass evacuations.
The takeaway
Arnab was a very severe cyclonic storm by IMD's scale, damaging but met with large-scale evacuations. Its real distinction is the calendar: the Bay of Bengal's first named storm of 2026 came months after the basin's usual start, during an El Nino pattern that research links to suppressed cyclone activity in that ocean.
Facts checked: October 30, 2026
Sources: NASA Earth Observatory. Arnab Strikes India, October 29, 2026 (storm timeline, VIIRS/NOAA-20 imagery, IMD wind estimates and classification, landfall location, El Nino context and cyclone-frequency research). Associated Press, October 28, 2026. Cyclone batters India's eastern coast (damage reports, evacuations, three deaths).