Chapala was the third named storm of the 2015 North Indian Ocean cyclone season. It developed as a depression on 28 October off western India, and strengthened a day later into a cyclonic storm. On 30 October, the India Meteorological Department estimated that Chapala attained peak three-minute sustained winds of 215 kmh. On 2 November, it became the strongest known cyclone in that body of water. It caused moderate damage in Somalia and Yemen during November 2015, and caused severe damage in Yemen a week later.
About Cyclone Chapala in brief
Chapala was the third named storm of the 2015 North Indian Ocean cyclone season. It developed as a depression on 28 October off western India, and strengthened a day later into a cyclonic storm. On 30 October, the India Meteorological Department estimated that Chapala attained peak three-minute sustained winds of 215 kmh. On 2 November, it became the strongest known cyclone in that body of water. Chapala brushed the northern coast of Somalia, killing tens of thousands of animals and wrecking 350 houses. It then skirted the Yemeni island of Socotra, becoming the first hurricane-force storm there since 1922. The storm made landfall near Mukalla, Yemen, as a very severecyclonic storm and the strongest storm on record to strike the nation. Eight people died in Yemen, a low total credited to the evacuations, and another 65 were injured. The country faced food and fuel shortages, and residual storm effects contributed to an outbreak of locusts and dengue fever, the latter of which killed seven people. At the time of Chapala’s peak, only Cyclone Gonu of 2007 was stronger, and Cyclone Kyarr in 2019 tied it in 2019, according to the IMD. The JTWC assessed Chapala as a high-end Category 4-equivalent cyclone on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale at 06:00 UTC on 6 November.
Based on their estimate, Chapala was also the second-strongest cyclone over the Arabian Sea at the time, and the second strongest in the North Indian Sea since Cyclone Megh in 2007. The agency estimated a minimum central pressure of 940 hPa. The storm weakened into a remnant low the next day overland, and was later downgraded to a tropical cyclone. The IMD upgraded Chapala to an extremely severe storm at 00: 00 UTC that day, and further to a very severe cyclonic storm at 18: 00 UTC. It was the second most powerful cyclone ever recorded in the Indian Ocean, after Cyclone Kyarr in 2009. It is the third most powerful storm to hit the Indian Ocean, after Cyclone Gonu in 2007 and Cyclone Kyrr in 2011. It caused moderate damage in Somalia and Yemen during November 2015, and caused severe damage in Yemen a week later. It also caused a power outage on the Yemeni island of Socotra due to high winds and heavy rainfall, and severe damage was compounded by CycloneMegh, which struck the island a week after Chapala. The Indian Meteorological Department estimated Chapala had a peak intensity of 215 kmh, making it among the strongest cyclones on record in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden. The IMD estimated a central central pressure of 940hPa at 09:40 UTC on 30 October.
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This page is based on the article Cyclone Chapala published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
