Cylone Mandous makes landfall, heavy rain and gusty winds in Chennai

Cyclone Mandous, which brought up to 10cm of rainfall and winds raging at 65kmph-75kmph and gusts that touched 85kmph, started crossing the east coast at Mamallapuram near Chennai around 9. 30pm on Friday. India Meteorological Department (IMD) officials said it would take nearly five hours for the landfall process to complete and for the system to completely move over land. With this, Mandous became the 13th cyclone to cross the coast between Chennai and Puducherry in 122 years. Late on Friday evening, winds picked up pace and rainfall suddenly stopped for a few minutes when IMD confirmed that the storm had begun to cross the coast. “The cyclone will continue to travel in the northwest direction towards Tiruvannamalai and weaken into a deep depression,” said S Balachandran, deputy director general, Regional Meteorological Centre.