A NASA satellite image released Oct. 29 places Cyclone Arnab over the Bay of Bengal more than a day before the storm began crossing India’s eastern coast.
NASA Earth Observatory published the nighttime scene using readings gathered by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard NOAA-20 at 4:12 p.m. ET Oct. 26 (20:12 UTC). The frame shows a rounded mass of bright clouds over dark water, with city lights on land at the left edge.
NASA said the image used VIIRS day-night band data and credited Michala Garrison. The image data also drew on NASA’s GIBS/Worldview and EOSDIS LANCE services, along with the Joint Polar Satellite System.
Arnab emerged over the Bay of Bengal on Oct. 25, NASA said. The image was captured 24 hours and 18 minutes before the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said landfall began at 4:30 p.m. ET Oct. 27. Although NASA released the scene after the coastal crossing, it shows the storm before landfall, not conditions at shore.
The IMD said Arnab crossed the Andhra Pradesh and Yanam coasts between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam in a period that ended at 10:30 p.m. ET. Maximum sustained winds reached 125–135 km/h, with gusts up to 150 km/h. The storm’s center was entirely over land by the end of that window, the department said.
NASA said Arnab was the first storm named in the North Indian Ocean during the 2026 cyclone season. Named storms in the basin typically begin appearing in April or May, the agency said, making Arnab’s Oct. 25 emergence a late start.
EconoTimes previously reported flooding along India’s east coast during Arnab’s landfall.
