When the eye of the storm moves from sea to land, the region might experience a temporary lull with clear skies, marking the system's landfall. The US National Hurricane Centre defines a cyclone's landfall as 'the intersection of the surface centre of a tropical cyclone with a coastline'. Luckily, when cyclones cross over into land, their intake of water and heat gets cut off from the ocean, leading to a quick drop in their intensity. If storms maintained their intensity over land, we'd be looking at a lot more devastation than we're used to, and coastal regions would probably be a lot less habitable as a result. As the landfall becomes imminent on December 5, let's get down to the specifics of what it means to 'make landfall', when Michaung will strike, and so on. The longer Michaung spends time out at sea, the more devastating it could turn as cyclones draw energy from the warmth and moisture of the sea. Now, the powerhouse has begun to drag its windy feet across the Tamil Nadu coast as it detours towards Andhra, mainly due to a lack of background atmospheric winds to steer the cyclone forward, DTE reported. However, this long journey also helped the fourth BoB storm of 2023 accumulate enough power to intensify into a Severe Cyclonic Storm by Monday morning, December 4. Michaung (pronounced 'Mig-jaum') has fortunately completed most of its seafaring, having crossed most parts of the Indian Ocean to the west-central and adjoining southwest Bay of Bengal. The latest Cyclone Michaung, too, looked like it was on the path towards Tamil Nadu, but quickly decided to turn stormier before erratically barrelling northwards towards Andhra's coasts instead. Predicting the behaviour of angry people can be an arduous task, but the same is often also true for the storms that originate and drunkenly wobble across our neighbouring oceans.
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