Odisha shut all schools and colleges and ordered the evacuation of more than a million people living in low-lying regions on Wednesday as emergency personnel raced against time to make preparations for Cyclone Fani barrelling towards the state.

The state government asked all tourists in the temple town of Puri to leave by Thursday evening and banned the entry of new tourists in the city, which braced for the cyclone’s landfall on Friday around 5.30pm with predicted wind speeds of up to 205 km/h.

The India Meteorological Department categorized Fani as an extremely severe cyclonic storm and the strongest pre-monsoon cyclone in the last four decades. Fani is currently centered at about 660km south-southwest of Puri in Odisha and 400km south to southeast of Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

“It is very likely to move north-westwards during next 12 hours and thereafter re-curve north-northeastwards and cross Odisha coast between Gopalpur and Chandbali, around Puri on May 3 afternoon with maximum sustained wind of speed 170-180 kmph gusting to 200 kmph,” said director of regional meteorological centre in Bhubaneswar, HR Biswas.

The IMD warned of storm surges of about 2.5-4.7 m height which may inundate low-lying areas of Ganjam, Khurda, Puri and Jagatsinghpur at the time of landfall. Puri is expected to see large-scale sea water inundation.

The cyclonic storm is likely to trigger heavy to very heavy rainfall at many coastal and interior districts in Odisha from Thursday and heavy to very heavy rain at isolated places over north Odisha on Friday. Biswas said Odisha is likely to receive more than 20cm of rainfall due to Fani, about 10% of the state’s annual average.

Weather expert Sarat Mahapatra said though windspeeds were unlikely to reach the levels of the super-cyclone of 1999 that left close to 10,000 dead and 1.5 million displaced, winds blowing at 170km/h are enough to ensure the total destruction of thatched houses, uprooting of power and communication poles, disruption of railways, overhead powerlines and signalling systems, damage to standing crops, plantations, orchards, blowing down of bushy trees like mango and damage of small boats and country crafts.

“Fani is expected to cause more damage to coastal Odisha as compared to cyclone Titli that had hit the Odisha-Andhra coast last year during Dussehra,” said Mahapatra. Though Titli did not make landfall in Odisha, the resultant rain led to landslides in Gajapati district killing more than 60 people in the state and 85 people across India.

Odisha special relief commissioner Bishnupada Sethi said 28 national disaster relief force, 20 Odisha disaster relief force and other fire department units have also been dispatched to the coastal districts. The Eastern Railway announced the cancellation or delay of 81 trains on the Bhadrak-Bhubaneswar-Puri-Visakhapatnam section. Trains from Bengaluru, Chennai and Secundrabad to Howrah on Thursday evening have been cancelled. Officials in Bhubaneswar’s Nandankanan zoo also decided to close the zoo from May 2 to May 4 and keep all the captive animals in feeding chambers.

The Election Commission gave its nod for shifting of the EVMs to safer locations in Odisha, where four-phased elections for the Lok Sabha and state assembly were completed on April 29.