Nor’westers accompanied by heavy hailstorms caused widespread destruction in several parts of Odisha on Monday, officials said.
Athagarh town in Cuttack district and Daspalla area in Nayagarh were hit particularly hard, experiencing intense thunderstorms, lightning, and violent wind gusts, they said.
In Athagarh, a parked car was damaged after a cement structure, installed by the local Notified Area Council (NAC), collapsed onto it during the storm.
Commuters in Nayagarh’s Daspalla block faced major delays as uprooted trees blocked primary roads. Local residents and fire service teams later cleared the debris and restored the flow of traffic, officials said.
The adverse weather also disrupted local traditions; a festival pandal erected for ‘Lankapodi’ in Daspalla was severely damaged, with organisers noting that the high winds actually blew the head off a Ravana effigy, said an organiser.
Agricultural losses were also reported in Kalahandi’s Dharamgarh block and Bolangir’s Patnagarh and Khaprakhol blocks, where hailstones and torrential rain destroyed crops and damaged several mud-walled (kutcha) houses.
The rain and storms, however, provided a reprieve from the sweltering heat. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) stated that temperatures across the state dipped significantly, with no location breaching the 40-degree Celsius mark.
Boudh was the hottest place in the state, recording a temperature of 38.3 degrees Celsius.
The regional meteorological office has issued warnings for Tuesday, predicting lightning and wind speeds of 30–40 kmph for the districts of Kendrapada, Jagatsinghpur, Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, and Cuttack.
The regional met office has predicted that the nor’wester and rains will persist till April 10.
