The Eye of Sidr

The Eye of Sidr has crossed the coast as expected.

BBC World News web site has yet to mention the event. I guess the Brits are really pissed off about the whole post-colonial thing.

CNN has this:

Tropical Cyclone Sidr swept in from the Bay of Bengal packing winds of 149 mph (240 kilometers per hour), buffeting southwestern coastal areas within a 155-mile radius of its eye with heavy rain and storm surges predicted to reach 20 feet high.

Sidr's eye crossed the Khulna-Barisal coast near the Sundarbans mangrove forests around 9:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. ET), the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said. It was centered over the Baleshwar River in Barguna district.

[cnn]

From Al Jazeera:

Officials at a local tourist destination said they had evacuated nearly 200,000 people to about 600 government and private shelters and asked others to move on their own.

Around 400,000 more people have evacuated other coastal areas, disaster management officials said.

Power and telephone links have been largely cut, but some mobile networks are working sporadically.

Rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal along parts of the southern coast have all swollen and are still rising, water department officials said.
[AJ]