India’s Cyclone Arnab brings high toll of extreme weather into focus
A cyclone that powered up over unusually warm ocean waters is taking aim at a section of India’s coastline that’s dense with billions of dollars in data centers, underscoring the threats to infrastructure in a world where extreme weather is becoming mo...
BENGALURU, India -- A cyclone that powered up over unusually warm ocean waters is taking aim at a section of India's coastline that's dense with billions of dollars of investment in data centers, underscoring the threats to infrastructure in a world where extreme weather is becoming more frequent.
Cyclone Arnab roared ashore Wednesday in eastern India with powerful winds and heavy rain, killing three people and inundating roughly 200,000 acres of cropland, according to authorities. Electricity poles have been uprooted and roads blocked. Heavy rainfall emerged as the biggest threat to areas inland as the storm's wind speeds weakened.
Meteorologists said that unusually high temperatures across the Bay of Bengal helped fuel Arnab.
Its arrival on a coastline where billions of dollars are being invested in data centers underscores how extreme weather threatens both existing livelihoods and the infrastructure intended to drive future growth, said climate experts. It will likely take days or weeks for full damage estimates to be calculated.
Unusually high temperatures across the Bay of Bengal, an already warm atmosphere and heat stored below the surface helped fuel Arnab, according to K.J. Ramesh, a former director general of the Indian Meteorological Department.
“A warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture, increasing the potential for intense rainfall,” he said.
The unusually warm waters also helped the storm strengthen rapidly, according to Akshay Deoras, a weather expert at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. He said cyclones are part of natural weather patterns but warming from human-caused climate change can amplify their rainfall.
The storm follows India’s weakest southwest monsoon since 2015. A strong El Niño weather phenomenon combined with an already warming climate has resulted in sparse rainfall from June through September, according to weather experts. Districts across several Indian states have declared droughts and southern and eastern India suffered particularly large deficits.
Intense downpours offer little reassurance when rain falls unevenly. Heavy rainfall can also run off hardened, dry ground, rather than being absorbed.
Past extreme weather events have already taken a devastating toll on India. In 2025 alone, the country experienced extreme weather on 360 days, with 4,421 people killed and 17.41 million hectares (43.21 million acres) of cropland affected, according to the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. India is among the top 10 most vulnerable countries to climate impacts and has suffered losses of $170 billion in the three decades from 1995 to 2024—the period for which the latest data is available—according to the think tank Germanwatch’s Climate Risk Index.
Heat waves reduce the productivity of factory and outdoor workers, while floods and cyclones interrupt transport, electricity and logistics, said Anjal Prakash, a public policy professor at Flame University in Pune, India. He said these indirect costs are easily overlooked in early assessments focused on damaged crops, homes and roads.
“Households often bear the earliest and harshest losses through damaged homes, destroyed assets and lost wages,” said Prakash. He said many farmers, informal workers and small enterprises lack insurance or savings, making it harder for them to recover their losses. Governments then face reconstruction bills that can squeeze investment in schools, healthcare, transport and industrial capacity, he said.
The regional costs are also immense. Pakistan’s 2022 floods killed more than 1,730 people and caused over $30 billion in damage and economic losses, according to a government-led assessment. More recently, the Nepal floods in August this year are estimated to have caused over $4 billion in damages, along with thousands of deaths.
“The biggest blind spot is the cascading disruptions,” said Prakash. A flooded road or damaged substation can interrupt factories, supply chains and services far beyond the disaster zone, he said.
Those factors matter for India’s data center expansion plans. The city of Visakhapatnam, in the path of Arnab's heavy rains, is where Google, Adani and Airtel plan to invest $15 billion for a hyperscale data center.
A 2025 assessment by climate-risk analytics firm XDI of 228 Indian data centers projected that more than 1-in-10 would face high risks of damage from climate change by 2050 under a high-emissions scenario. The analysis also showed that structural adaptations could substantially reduce damage risks.
Prakash said these facilities face overlapping threats from flooding, heat, unreliable electricity and water scarcity. Planning based on historical weather can underestimate how climate change is increasing extreme weather.
Prakash said infrastructure planning must account for future climate conditions, including strengthening electricity grids, flood-proofing roads and housing and improving crop insurance. Businesses also need continuity plans that consider several failures occurring together, such as a cyclone followed by power cuts and transport disruption.
Deoras said forecasting had improved for large weather systems, but local thunderstorms and flash floods remained difficult to predict, leaving dangerous gaps in protection.
Prakash said India and its South Asian neighbors should seek predictable, grant-based adaptation finance and simpler access to United Nations loss and damage funding at the upcoming global climate talks in Turkey next month. “Climate finance must reach the frontline communities before losses become irreversible,” he said.
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Sibi Arasu can be followed on X at @sibi123. Reach him at sarasu@ap.org.
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