Cyclone Asna leaves no major impact on Gujarat

Cyclone Asna, formed over the coast of Kutch in Gujarat earlier during the day, has moved into the Arabian sea towards Oman without leaving any major impact on the region, officials said on Friday evening.

As a precautionary measure, the local administration had shifted nearly 3,500 persons to safer locations and had asked people living in huts and mud houses to take shelter in other buildings, said Kutch district collector Amit Arora.

In a release issued on Friday evening, IMD said the deep depression over Kutch coast and adjoining areas of Pakistan had "intensified into Cyclonic Storm Asna and lay centred at 11:30 am over the same region nearly 190 km west-northwest of Bhuj".

The IMD had earlier said a deep depression that brought torrential rains and floods to Gujarat on Friday has intensified into Cyclone Asna off the coast of Kachchh and adjoining areas of Pakistan, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reported. This marks the first cyclonic storm to form in the Arabian Sea during August since 1976, highlighting the rarity of such occurrences in this region during the monsoon season.

The cyclone, named Asna by Pakistan, meaning “the one to be acknowledged or praised,” developed from a deep depression over the Kachchh coast.