What made Cyclone Biparjoy unique, why its path was difficult to predict

Subject: Geography

Section: Physical geography (Climatology)

Context:

Biparjoy had some characteristics that not only made it difficult to predict its path, but also made the cyclone potentially more dangerous.

Details:

Cyclones usually give adequate warning of their arrival.
Cyclones take 4-5 days to reach the Indian landmass from both, the Arabian sea and the Bay of Bengal.
If a sufficient number of weather instruments are monitoring them, from the oceans as well as from satellites, everything about the cyclones — speed, intensity, trajectory, associated wind speeds — can be predicted accurately.

Cyclone Biporjoy:

It developed from very severe cyclonic storm into a extremely severe cyclonic storm in a 10-day period, which was longer than the average but not the longest.
One of the reasons for its longer stay on the sea was its relatively slow speed.
Cyclones in the Arabian Sea typically progress with a speed of about 12-14 km per hour.
Biparjoy, through most of its life, moved at a speed of 5-7 km an hour while covering a distance of nearly 1200 km to Gujarat.
Biparjoy was sandwiched between two anticyclonic systems. One of them had the effect of aiding its northwards movement, while the other was sort of pulling it back. The combined effect was that it moved relatively slowly.
The influence of these anticyclonic systems also made its trajectory wobble.
- It is called the recurving tracks cyclone. The trajectory of such cyclones tends to change directions frequently.
- Predicting the trajectory of recurving cyclones is extremely challenging, with an extra element of uncertainty.

Unpredictable path:

Cyclone Biparjoy was earlier predicted to proceed towards Karachi in Pakistan.
Most cyclones of this intensity complete the landfall in about three to four hours. Biparjoy took about five hours. The slow speed meant that even after reaching land, the cyclone remained close enough to the sea to draw moisture and sustain itself.
Longer landfalls have a greater potential to cause destruction. The most dramatic landfall was in the case of the Odisha super cyclone of 1998, the most devastating cyclone to have hit India in recent decades. That process had continued for nearly 30 hours.