India's strongest cyclone in 14 years tore up crops and blew away buildings, but caused fewer casualties than feared owing to advance evacuations of at least 1 million people. Cyclone Phailin hit northeastern India on 12 October, with satellite estimates from the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggesting that, before it made landfall, storm winds blew at up to 260 kilometres per hour: on a par with a 1999 cyclone that killed some 10,000 people in the region. Phailin weakened before it hit land; it caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage, but, in contrast to the 1999 storm, only 27 deaths had been reported as Nature went to press.
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