MYTHS AND SCIENCE BEHIND FANI, THE CYCLONE
MYTHS AND SCIENCE BEHIND FANI, THE CYCLONE
Let us ruminate the myths connected with cyclone , its self-explanatory other names, if not for anything but for amusement.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites Urdu tufan and Chinese tai fung giving rise to several early forms in English. The earliest forms -- "touffon", later "tufan", "tuffon", and others—derive from Urdu tufan, with citations as early as 1588. From 1699 appears "tuffoon", later "tiffoon", derived from Chinese with spelling influenced by the older Urdu-derived forms. The modern spelling "typhoon" dates to 1820, preceded by "tay-fun" in 1771 and "ty-foong", all derived from the Chinese tai fung. (source – Wikipedia).
The Urdu source word tufan ("violent storm"; cognate to Hindi (tufan)) comes from the Persian tufan meaning "storm" which comes from the verb tufidan (Persian: "to roar, to blow furiously"). The word tufan is also derived from Arabic tafa, means to turn round
In Hindu mythology, when Vayudev blows with his most fiercely form, i.e. 49th form, it is called "Prabhanjana", meaning most forceful breaker .
In the Atlantic and the northeastern Pacific oceans, a tropical cyclone is generally referred to as a hurricane from the name of the ancient Central American deity of wind, Huracan
In meteorology, a cyclone is a large scale air mass that rotates around a strong center of low atmospheric pressure.Cyclones are characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate about a zone of low pressure.
And as per our Indian mythology Vayudeva when gets angry blows fiercely in the form of cyclone,hurricane,typhoon, tornado and storm etc. causing extensive damage .It is one of the dreaded natural calamities.When gets angry he not only blows fiercely , but silently as well causing much more damage than the other type.
Lord Vayu was also the spiritual father of Lord Hanuman. Once when Hanuman was a small child, he thought of the sun to be a fruit. So, he tried to eat the sun itself. Seeing his actions, the gods got very scared, and thought that he was a demon. Lord Indra, furious with his antics, attacked him with his vajra, the strongest weapon there is. The vajra ended up hitting Hanuman, and he became unconscious and started falling down to the earth.
Just at that moment, Vayu caught Hanuman and carried him to a safe place. Seeing the atrocities done on his son by the gods, Vayu got so angry that he stopped the supply of air and wind in the universe, to avenge his son. This resulted in animals and humans both getting suffocated, and on the brink of death. The gods, being helpless in this situation, went to Lord Brahma and told him the whole incident.
Brahma, along with the other gods, went to Lord Vayu and requested him to let go of the air supply, so that everyone could breathe again. He also cured Hanuman. Finally, after a lot of persuading, Vayu allowed air to flow in the universe again, and things were back to the way they were.
Vayudev’s this silent method of punishing can be explained scientifically. Silent killing of mass by Vayu is to withdraw from the world gradually or suddenly ,thus decreasing atmospheric oxygen concentration .Details are furnished below. And this may happen if not today ,tomorrow, or day after. Low percentage of atmospheric oxygen may occur due to man himself apropos of increasing atmospheric pollution day by day.
Once Vayu had attacked Mount Meru and broken off its summit. According to legend, once Narada Muni instigated Vayu to break off the top of Mount Meru. Vayu, being the short tempered and violent god he is, started hitting the top with ferocious gushes of wind and tornado that went on for a year. Garuda, the king of the eagles and the mount of Lord Vishnu, ably protected the top of the mountain by spreading his wings and taking the brunt of Vayu’s force.
After one year of this happening, Garuda got tired and relaxed from his post for a while. Narada saw this as the perfect opportunity, and asked Lord Vayu to hit the summit with double his might. This time, Lord Vayu was successful in hitting the top and ripping it off. Vayu then threw the top in the sea, and which became the island of Srilanka.
And this time Vayudev having well prepared came mysteriously with love from Sumatra and landed in Odisha not with bouquet as expected because of Indonesia’s indebtedness towards Odisha during later’s freedom struggle when the bravest of brave Odia aviator Biju Patnaik flew to Jakarta and brought their prime minister Sjahrir to India to raise international pressure against Dutch to leave Indonesia, but with wreaths.
Vayudev in the robe of Fani(Hood of a Snake) ,started from a tropical depression that formed west of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean on 26 April. Vertical wind shear at first hindered the storm's development, but conditions became more favorable on 30 April. Fani rapidly intensified into an extremely severe cyclonic storm and reached its peak intensity on 2 May, as a high-end extremely severe cyclonic storm, and the equivalent of a high-end Category 4 major hurricane. At 8:00 a.m. IST (02:30 UTC) 3 May, Fani made landfall near Puri, Odisha with 3-minute sustained winds of 185 km/h (115 mph). Land interaction quickly degraded Fani's convective structure; and it weakened to a Category 1-equivalent tropical cyclone soon after landfall. Fani continued to weaken after landfall, weakening to a cyclonic storm later that day,before passing just north of Kolkata. On 4 May, Fani weakened to a deep depression and moved into Bangladesh, before degenerating into a well-marked low later on the same day. On 5 May, Fani's remnant low dissipated over Bhutan.
A little more dissection of the anatomy of natural disasters like Fani, and we may reach at a conclusion ,“Natural disasters are not so ‘natural’.
Some natural hazards occur because of forces outside our control. For example, the movement of Earth’s crustal plates triggers earthquakes and tsunamis. Variation in solar radiation entering the atmosphere and oceans triggers storms in the summertime and blizzards in winter. The movement of energy in Earth’s system is what drives these natural processes.
Despite these normal processes, experts now say there is no such thing as “natural disasters”, for three reasons.
First, humanity is interfering with the Earth system. For example, as we drive anthropogenic climate change we are adding more energy to the system. This increases the probability of more frequent and intense “hydro-meteorological” hazards such as floods, bushfires, heatwaves and tropical cyclones.
Second, we are (mis)managing natural systems. For example, removing the buffering protection of mangroves on the coast means a storm surge can be more disastrous.
Third, our settlements are sprawling out across the Earth’s surface into geographic areas where natural hazards occur. This exposes us to harm and loss when the inevitable happens.
Disasters don’t need to happen
Potentially hazardous events do not need to end in a disaster. Disasters occur because of the intersection of hazard _with _exposed people and assets that are vulnerable to the hazard. They are characterised by a lack of resilience and poor capacity to cope and respond in the affected area. Without vulnerability there can be no disaster.”
Dale Dominey-Howes
The cyclone Fani ravaged Odisha beyond immediate return to normalcy. Numerous explanations including butterfly effect of chaos theory of quantum mechanics of the genesis of Fani would keep coming for academic purpose, but it landed, caused irreparable damages in the state of Odisha and dissipated, leaving behind horrified foot prints of its sojourn.
Images of Cyclone FANI,Odisha
HOW FANI TACKLED
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