The Beast Approaches: India Prepares For Monster Cyclone Phailin

India has emergency preparations in place as highly dangerous Cyclone Phailin, which formed only a few days ago in the Bay of Bengal, bears down on the sub-continent.  The storm is as of now the equivalent of a Category Five on the Saffir-Simpson scale  and is enormous in size, comparable in size to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region of the United States in 2005.

Highly destructive winds well over 160 kph (100 mph) and flooding rain of at least 100-200 mm (4-8 inches) is expected across a wide area.  A catastrophic storm surge of at least 4-6 meters (14-20 feet) is expected in advance of the storm making landfall on Saturday morning, local time.

The local government has issued mandatory evacuation orders for people living in the path of the ferocious storm, with several hundred thousands residents already relocated to designated shelters throughout the region. Anyone residing in the states of Orissa or eastern Andhra Pradesh is strongly encouraged to take proper precautions and prepare for life-threatening conditions as the storm makes landfall.

Phailin is the most dangerous storm to hit the region since 1999, when super cyclone Odisha hit India, killing more than 15,000 people.  The areas expected to be pummeled by Phailan this weekend, specifically in an area from the cities of Visakhapatnam to Brahmapur, is home to millions of people, a majority of whom live in substandard housing.

After making landfall in northeastern India on Saturday, the cyclone will continue to track northwest through the interior of India and weaken Sunday into Monday, where heavy rain will continue to cause flooding and even mudslides through early next week.

To the Extreme: Climate Specialists Warn of Extreme & Dangerous Weather to Come

A group of top climatologists have released a dire new report warning the nations of the world to prepare for an ever-increasing list of catastrophic and deadly weather conditions to play out over the next several years.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a shocking report on extreme weather after an emergency meeting was convened in Kampala, Uganda. This is the first time the group of scientists and climate experts have focused their attention on the dangers of extreme weather events.

One of the study's lead investigators, Maarten van Aalst, director of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre in the Netherlands, puts it bluntly: "We need to be worried. Our response needs to anticipate disasters and reduce risk before they happen rather than wait until after they happen and clean up afterward...the  risk has already increased dramatically."

The report goes on to say, "a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extreme weather and climate events". 

Another expert, Chris Field of Stanford University, said: "We face many challenges in the future; those include floods, drought, storms, and heatwaves."

The study is released after 2011 has been dubbed "The Year of The Disaster", with a series of weather-related catastrophes in the US alone causing tens of billions of dollars in damages and loss of property and life.  The East Coast of the US has been hit with a series of record-breaking winter storms, a costly hurricane as well as a rare earthquake, while the Midwest and South were slammed with terrifying tornado outbreaks and floods of biblical proportions, leaving two nuclear power plants underwater. A record breaking heat wave and drought scorched Texas and Oklahoma and massive wildfires burned millions of acres of land in New Mexico, Arizona and California, with Reno, Nevada, currently being decimated by raging fires. Alaska was pounded by a winter "hurricane" only a few weeks ago, the worst storm on record to hit the state.


The costliest disaster of all time (so far) took place in March of this year, with the cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in Japan causing several hundred billion dollars in damages and claiming more than 30,000 lives. The tsunami also created the worst nuclear accident of all time, as the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant went into a full-scale melt-down.

Fasten your seat belts, folks...it's going to be a bumpy ride...