NASA said Cyclone Arnab, the first named storm of the 2026 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, struck India’s east coast, making landfall along Andhra Pradesh and Yanam. The agency said the storm formed in the Bay of Bengal on October 25 after a late start to a season that often sees named storms in April or May.

The storm affected a heavily settled stretch between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam that includes large cities, farmland, and fishing communities, NASA said. News reports cited by NASA described extensive damage, including uprooted trees, flooded crops and homes, curtailed fishing operations, and disrupted transport and power networks. NASA said Indian authorities moved tens of thousands of people from vulnerable coastal areas before landfall.

A nighttime image from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite at 20:12 Universal Time on October 26 (1:42 a.m. India Standard Time on October 27) showed the storm when sustained winds were about 140 kilometers (85 miles) per hour, according to the India Meteorological Department. NASA said Arnab came ashore early on October 28 with sustained winds of 130 kilometers per hour. The India Meteorological Department categorizes a storm of that strength as a “very severe cyclonic storm,” which is similar to a Category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.

NASA placed the storm in the context of an ongoing El Niño, a climate pattern marked by warmer-than-normal water in parts of the equatorial Pacific that recurs every two to seven years. The agency said such ocean changes can alter the atmosphere in ways that shift global weather, including rainfall, winds, tropical cyclones, fires, and floods. NASA also noted research indicating that during El Niño years the Bay of Bengal tends to see fewer and less intense tropical cyclones.

NASA Earth Observatory produced the image, which used VIIRS day-night band data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Joint Polar Satellite System, and reported the storm’s evolution using information from the India Meteorological Department and news reports.