KOLKATA, India — Trees were uprooted and streets flooded as strong winds and heavy rain battered India’s West Bengal state early on Monday, a day after Cyclone Remal made landfall.
The cyclone struck on Sunday evening around 9 p.m. local time and continued for about five hours, according to the regional meteorological office in Kolkata.
At least four people have been killed since Remal hit, including two in India and two in neighboring Bangladesh.
Nearly a million people were moved to storm shelters, with about 800,000 in Bangladesh and roughly 110,000 in India, authorities said.
Reports of at least 356 uprooted electricity poles and damage to scores of transformers emerged during the storm’s landfall in India, officials added.
Cyclone Remal, the first cyclone of the year in the region, is the latest in a series of frequent storms that have battered the low-lying coasts of South Asian neighbors in recent years, as climate change drives up sea surface temperatures.
