India's 2013 Cyclone Phailin Directly Killed 21 People Where the 1999 Odisha Super Cyclone Killed About 9,900, and Better Forecasts Were Only Part of the Reason

The Odisha super cyclone that crossed the coast near Paradip on 29 October 1999 killed 9,885 people by the count in the 2023 annual review of the WMO/ESCAP Panel on Tropical Cyclones, and 9,893 by the count in a 2006 paper in the India Meteorological Department’s journal Mausam. Cyclone Phailin crossed the same state’s coast on 12 October 2013, and the United Nations disaster office credited Odisha with limiting the deaths directly caused by it to 21.

The two storms were not equal. IMD calls Phailin, which made landfall with sustained winds of 215 km/h, the most intense landfall over the north Indian Ocean since 1999. The 1999 storm’s core winds were estimated at 260 to 270 km/h. Several storms after Phailin killed more people than it did, and they are in the record below.

The 1999 toll, and the warning that came two days earlier

The Mausam paper, by S. R. Kalsi, takes its damage figures from Government of Orissa and other official reports. About 7,000 of the dead drowned in the storm surge, the paper says, about 2,000 died in the floods the cyclone brought, and the rest were killed by falling objects or blown away by the wind. Jagatsinghpur district alone accounts for 8,119 deaths in its figures, and the paper ties a toll of more than 7,000 in Erasama block, in daylight hours, to the storm’s small radius of strongest winds, about 15 km.

Official tallies are not the only ones. Frank Thomalla and Hanna Schmuck wrote in the journal Disasters in 2004 that government statistics give 10,000 deaths and that the unofficial toll is much higher. They did not name a figure.

According to Kalsi, the cyclone warning centre at Bhubaneswar issued a warning on the afternoon of 26 October, more than 48 hours before landfall. The state told district collectors to move people living within 10 km of the sea, and nearly 150,000 were shifted in five districts. The coast had 35 cyclone warning dissemination systems. Twenty-three permanent shelters built by the Red Cross Society in six coastal districts protected about 30,000 people.

The same paper lists what was missing. The radar at Paradip produced analog images only, with no digital output, and stopped recording when the power failed. The 24 hour landfall forecast from IMD’s model missed the crossing point by about 100 km. Kalsi wrote that IMD’s forecasts were very accurate and given well in advance, and he concluded that the toll came mainly from a lack of preparedness.

Phailin, 12 October 2013: 983,642 evacuated, 21 dead

Phailin crossed near Gopalpur around 1700 UTC on 12 October 2013. For Odisha, the department’s report for the year lists 983,642 people evacuated because of the cyclone, 21 human deaths due to the cyclone and 17 more due to the floods that followed. The UN statement of 23 December 2013 put the evacuation at almost 1 million. Margareta Wahlström, then head of the UN disaster office, called Odisha’s handling “a landmark success story in disaster management”. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, receiving the citation, thanked the meteorological department for an accurate prediction that he said played a major role in the state’s preparedness.

Part of the gap with 1999 is the storm itself. A post-cyclone survey by IMD put Phailin’s surge at 2 to 2.5 m above the astronomical tide in Ganjam, and the Panel’s 2023 review puts the 1999 surge at 5 to 6 m. By Kalsi’s account, surge killed most of the 1999 victims.

Landfall forecasts got much closer

IMD publishes the yearly average error of its landfall point forecasts. At 24 hours ahead the error was 257 km in 2003 (one landfalling cyclone), 550 km in 2004 (one), and between 96 and 167 km in each year from 2005 to 2008. By 2013 it was 29 km (four cyclones), and by 2024 it was 14.4 km (four). A single year rests on few storms, so IMD’s 2024 verification report gives five-year averages as well. At 24 hours the error was 44.7 km in 2015 to 2019 and 16.2 km in 2020 to 2024, and at 48 hours it was 69.4 km and 39.3 km. Track errors, which measure the whole path and not only the crossing point, fell by less, from 81 km to 72 km at 24 hours.

For single storms, IMD’s reports give 24 hour landfall point errors of 13 km for Phailin, 11.5 km for Fani in 2019, 5.5 km for Amphan in 2020, 20 km for Remal in May 2024 and 4 km for Dana in October 2024. For Remal, the department first flagged a likely cyclone in an extended range outlook of 9 May, about 15 days before the depression formed.

The tools changed too. In 2013 the department’s report counted 11 cyclone detection radars on the coast and called those at Goa, Mumbai, Paradip, Karaikal, Bhuj and Kochi old and due for replacement. That report says Phailin was followed mainly by satellite until 12 October, when it came within range of the Doppler radar at Visakhapatnam, about 310 km away. Six Doppler radars followed Fani up the coast, including Gopalpur and Paradip. The Panel’s 2025 review counts 47 Doppler weather radars across the country and 16 radars along the coast, and three of the 47 belong to ISRO. According to the same review, INSAT-3DS and INSAT-3DR now run in a staggered mode that gives an image every 15 minutes. Half-hourly INSAT-3D and 3DR imagery followed Fani in 2019, IMD’s report on that storm says.

Shelters and evacuations

The World Economic Forum’s 2019 account counts some 800 multipurpose cyclone and flood shelters built along the Odisha coast since 1999. OSDMA, the state disaster authority, designed them with IIT Kharagpur for winds up to 300 km/h, with plinths above the high flood line, the account says. OSDMA’s own page on its rapid action force says the case for the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force was made in the reconstruction phase of late 1999, to handle search, rescue and the clearing of relief routes. The force is now 20 units of about 50 personnel each, drawn from the state’s armed police.

For Fani, which crossed near Puri on 3 May 2019 with winds of 175 to 185 km/h, IMD’s report cites press reports of 15,57,170 people evacuated in Odisha, 17,460 in Andhra Pradesh and 2,34,801 in West Bengal. The World Economic Forum account says Odisha used 9,177 shelters, 879 of them purpose-built multipurpose shelters, with the rest schools and other public buildings. Fishing was suspended two days before landfall, and about 25,000 tourists were taken out on 23 special trains and 18 buses, the same account says. Odisha reported 64 deaths, according to IMD’s report, and none were recorded in Andhra Pradesh or West Bengal.

Storms since that still killed dozens

Warnings and evacuations have not ended deaths. On Ockhi in 2017, IMD’s report, citing the Home Ministry, lists 35 deaths and 199 missing in Tamil Nadu and 75 deaths and 137 missing fishermen in Kerala. The Panel’s 2023 review says Titli in 2018 caused landslides and fatal flooding despite a precise early warning, with more than 50 casualties.

Amphan crossed the West Bengal coast on 20 May 2020 with a 24 hour landfall error of 5.5 km. In West Bengal, IMD’s report records 98 deaths, and none in Odisha. A damage table reproduced in the report lists 99 deaths, with falling trees and electrocution the largest causes and 19 of the deaths in Kolkata.

Dana in October 2024 went the other way. Odisha reported no deaths, according to IMD’s report, which cites media reports, and West Bengal reported one, from electrocution. The report adds that eight lakh people were evacuated to 6,210 cyclone relief centres, 35.95 lakh were affected by the storm and the flooding after it, and about 5,800 homes were damaged. The same report records seven deaths in West Bengal from Remal in May 2024. The Panel’s review says Biparjoy, which hit Gujarat on 26 June 2023 with 140 km/h winds, caused no recorded casualties, after the forecasters placed it five days ahead.

Accurate warnings, heavy tolls elsewhere in the Indian Ocean

Cyclone Chido hit the French island of Mayotte on 14 December 2024 with winds above 200 km/h. The WMO says Météo-France issued warnings more than 50 hours ahead, with an amber alert on 13 December at 7 am, a red alert that evening and a violet alert at 7 am on 14 December. The WMO page, dated 17 December 2024, reports early fears that hundreds of people may have died, in a place with many informal housing structures, and gives no confirmed toll. Météo-France said the impacts came above all from the storm’s track and its direct hit on the island.

Cyclone Ditwah crossed Sri Lanka on 27 November 2025 as a cyclonic storm with winds of 60 to 70 km/h, according to the Panel’s 2025 review. Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre said on 26 January 2026 that 649 people had died and 173 remained missing because of the landslides and floods the storm triggered.

The 2025 and 2026 seasons

The Panel’s 2025 review counts four cyclones in the north Indian Ocean that year, of which only Montha crossed India’s coast, against a normal of two a year. Montha crossed near Narsapur in Andhra Pradesh on 28 October 2025 as a severe cyclonic storm with winds of 90 to 100 km/h, gusting to 110. IMD’s table of landfall errors lists one landfalling cyclone for 2025, with a 24 hour error of 76 km. A PTI report of 30 October 2025 quotes an official press release saying three people died in the state.

For the June to September 2026 monsoon, which the monsoon season article covers, IMD’s report lists 14 low-pressure systems and no cyclonic storm.