Massive low-pressure builds off Myanmar, India warns

[India_Relief_Cyclone_Nargis_Survivors_in_Burma]

Massive low-pressure builds off Myanmar, India warns

May 15, 2008: (AFP) NEW DELHI: Indian meteorologists warned Wednesday
that a massive low pressure system was building off neighbouring
Myanmar and was likely to drench untold numbers of homeless cyclone
victims.

The United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) advised
Indian cyclone-warning units to track the system which currently
stretches from southwest Myanmar to the Gulf of Martban in the Indian
Ocean.

"It takes three to four days for a low pressure to turn into a
depression, a deep depression and then into a full-blown cyclone,"
said B.K. Bandhopadhya, chief of the Delhi-based Northern Hemisphere
Analysis Centre (NHAC).

"We are closely monitoring the developments," he told AFP as Myanmar
insisted it could handle the cyclone relief operation, despite fears
more people could die unless aid reached two million in dire need.

"This low pressure currently lies over east-central Bay of Bengal,
adjoining coastal Myanmar and this will cause moderate to intense
convective clouds (thunder storms) over southwest Myanmar, South
Arakan coast, northern parts of North Andaman Sea and the Gulf of
Martban," Bandhopadhya said.

For the next 48 hours the NHAC expected a "good amount of rains" in
the footprint of the low pressure system, adding that it was
impossible to predict if the storm would build into a cyclone.
The WMO's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre was coordinating with NHAC,
which hs a UN mandate to issue weather alerts to parts of Asia, over
the looming threat to Myanmar.
The Indian military in the Andaman archipelago warned naval warships
of impending bad weather.

"Storm warnings have already been issued to vessels at sea," one naval
official said by telephone from Port Blair, which is still recovering
from very heavy rains earlier this week.
Since Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar on May 2 and 3, leaving up to
66,000 dead or missing, its military rulers have accepted foreign aid
but largely rejected foreign relief workers.

European Union aid commissioner Louis Michel told AFP Wednesday "more
people will die" unless relief workers have full access to the worst-
hit areas.

The UN has meanwhile warned of a second wave of deaths from disease
and starvation unless vital aid quickly reaches those in need.

The US relief agency USAID earlier Thursday sought to reassure Myanmar
that a new cyclone was "highly unlikely," after reports that a
tropical depression could be forming near the storm-stricken nation.