News
Coastal-dwellers alerted to cyclone heading from India
Scenes from Mannar
A cyclone is heading for the coastal areas of India and Sri Lanka’s forecasters are predicting heavy rainfall. They have asked coastal-dwellers to take precautions.
A deep depression over west-central and near the south of the Bay of Bengal has moved north-west and is likely to move north-west, the weather forecasters say. This has intensified into a cyclonic storm, named ‘Jawad’.
On Saturday morning, winds and heavy rains were reported in coastal Odisha.
The cyclone is forecast to make landfall in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in India on Sunday morning, the media in India has reported. Winds of up to 100 kilometres are predicted. 
Sri Lanka’s Department of Meteorology has advised the navy fishing communities not to venture into areas in east central Bay of Bengal and nearby areas.
In a 5:30am forecast on Saturday, the department said showers or thundershowers can be expected in the provinces of Sabaragamuwa, Central, Uva, Southern and Western during the evening or night. Mainly fair weather will prevail elsewhere. Misty conditions can be expected in some places in Western, Uva, Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces during the morning.
The second inter-monsoon rainy season lasts from October to November.
Farmers says heavy rains have damaged cultivations of growers devastated by the lack of fertiliser, pesticides and weedicides — the chemical varieties, or the much-touted ‘organic’ kinds.
D.P. Upali Jayasinghe, the head of the Rajanganaya farmers association, said excessive rainfall has damaged the crop this year. Planting and harvesting were delayed. Root growth has been interrupted by the heavy rains, caused oxygen deficiency, and washed away nutrients.
“Most of the corn is vulnerable to heavy rainfall,’’ he said. Banana plantations have been badly affected by the Panama disease, a fungal infection, also called banana wilt.
The peanut harvest is also at risk from unseasonal rains. The harvest cannot be dried for storing.
The rains have destroyed finger millet, or kurakkan, and papaya cultivations.
Farmers also say the plant disease, ‘aster yellows’, caused by a bacteria, is affecting some of their crops.
In Mannar, farmers said floods have wrecked more than 17,000 acres of paddy.
More than 5,500 acres of paddy land in Manthai west Divisional Secretariat area have been damaged by floods, along with 2,400 acres in Musali division, 4,345 acres in Nanattan division, 825 acres in Madhu division and 4,042 acres in Mannar division.
Mannar District Agrarian Department assistant commissioner, A. Merin Kumar said that the harvest ready for threshing had been washed away.
Most rice farmers have borrowed from banks and are now unable to settle even the instalment payments.
The Disaster Management Centre reports that 52,559 people belonging to 14,161 families faced difficulties due to rains. In the Northern Province alone, 46,218 are badly affected.
(Additional reporting by Romesh Madusanka)
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