Cyclone Fani, which made landfall in neighbouring Odisha’s Puri district Friday morning, brought immediate rain in the Kolhan region, but its impact was expected to be more pronounced later with the state experiencing very heavy rainfall through Saturday.

Several areas, especially southern Jharkhand comprising the three districts of Kolhan, East and West Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan, witnessed over 20mm rain between 8am and 2.30pm. The local IMD observatory in Jamshedpur recorded 23mm rain till 2.30pm on Friday.

Capital Ranchi was overcast with light, intermittent rain.

“The impact of the cyclone will mostly be felt till 5.30am Saturday when it will cross the Kolhan region towards Gangetic West Bengal. We have issued an alert of heavy to very heavy rainfall in East and West Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan districts accompanied by wind with speeds of 60kmph,” Director of IMD’s Ranchi Meteorological Centre S.D. Kotal told The Telegraph.

He said Fani was being tracked by Doppler weather radars at Gopalpur, Paradip (Odisha) and IMD’s regional Met Centre at Alipore in Calcutta.

According to the Met director, on Saturday, north eastern parts of Jharkhand comprising Dhanbad, Deoghar, Jamtara, Dumka, and Pakur districts would experience heavy rainfall as the cyclone would head north-east and enter Bangladesh by the evening.

Met statistics revealed that light to moderate rain along with thunderstorm occurred at one or two places over Jharkhand during the last 24 hours. The highest rainfall of 7.2mm was recorded at Ghatshila on Thursday night. Several trees were uprooted and thatched huts destroyed in Ghatshila and its adjoining areas.

Overcast conditions prevailed in most parts of the state, including Ranchi, which witnessed about 1mm of rain Friday morning. There were reports of light showers from Khunti, Ramgarh and other places.

Maximum temperatures witnessed an abrupt fall. Except for Palamau and Garwah, where the day's reading hovered around 36-37 degree Celsius, in all other places, including Jamshedpur and Ranchi, the maximum temperature dropped below 30 degree Celsius on Friday.

Fani, categorised as a very severe cyclonic storm, originated from a tropical depression that formed west of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean on April 26. It made landfall close to Puri at 8am on Friday. It took around three hours for the landfall process to be completed.

After landfall, with gale wind speeds of 175kmph, the system passed through Khurda, Cuttack, Jajpur, Bhadrak and Balasore. It is expected to reach West Bengal by early Saturday morning with high velocity winds gusting at 115kmph.