Friday 15 / November / 2024
Muscat: A tropical storm is expected to strike Oman’s coast, the meteorology department and global typhoon warning centres predict.
According to the forecast from US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center and Tropical Storm Risk Centre, tropical storm 02A is forecast to strike Oman at about 00:00 GMT on June 30.
Data supplied by the US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point of landfall will be near 21.7 N, 60.5 E.
The storm 02A is expected to bring one-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 83 km/h (51 mph). Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher.
Oman meteorology department has said in its latest advisory that a low pressure system has formed in the Arabian Sea some 800kms from the Oman coast associated with wind speeds of 20 to 25knots.
“Weather analyses predict rain in the coming three days,” the meteorology department said, while advising people to follow weather updates from the authority to remain safe.
Saeed Al Sarmi, the Head of the Research Centre from Public Authority for Civil Aviation (PACA), also tweeted the guidance on his official twitter handle.
The JTWC forecast shows that the eye of the cyclone is 246 nautical miles from Muscat and 227 nautical miles from Masirah.
Biju MP, a businessman in Masirah Island, said that they have not received any alerts from the local authority so far.“Usually, they alert us. They may be issuing advisories this evening,” Biju told Times of Oman from Masirah by phone. The island stands to be the area worst affected by the storm.
In June 2015, Masirah, Sur and many regions of Yemen were badly hit by tropical storm Ashobaa.
Hundreds of people were rescued from low lying areas in Sur and nearby wilayats by Royal Oman Police personnel and helicopter rescue teams.
During Ashobaa, Oman meteorological department recorded 231mm of rain in Masirah.
