Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh and India were ordered to evacuate as the powerful cyclone made landfall. Dhaka is taking extra precautions to avert a repeat of the 1991 storm that killed 100,000 people.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/D. Sarkar
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Cyclone Bulbul made landfall on Saturday night in the world's largest mangrove forest between Bangladesh and India.
The powerful storm brought sustained winds of 74 kilometers per hour (46 mph) with gusts of up to 120 kilometers per hour (75 mph), shutting down airports and seaside ports.
Over 400,000 people were evacuated from at-risk areas in Bangladesh throughout the day, with over 50,000 volunteers going door to door to move people to safety from areas below sea level. Up to 1.8 million people were expected to be evacuated by Saturday evening.
"More people will be moved to the shelters, and we will hopefully be able to take all vulnerable people to safety," said Enamur Rahman, who serves as Bangladesh's junior minister for disaster management.
In India, officials said that nearly 120,000 people have been moved, with meteorologists saying that the cyclone was likely to weaken from "very severe" to "severe" as it crossed the coast.
Concerns over storm surges prompted officials to evacuate thousands of people from low-lying areasImage: Getty Images/AFP/D. Sarkar
'Gusts across the country'
Meteorologists are expecting parts of Bangladesh's low-lying coastline to be inundated by a storm surge of more than 2 meters (6.6 feet).
"The cyclone will pass through mid-west region, which may bring heavy rainfall or thundershowers accompanied by gusts across the country including Dhaka," said Ashraful Alam, a meteorologist at Bangladesh's weather authority, the Dhaka-based Daily Star reported.
Over the past decade, Bangladeshi authorities have ramped up emergency preparations in response to cyclones after more than 100,000 people were killed and millions more made homeless when a powerful storm struck in 1991.
India also evacuated more than 100,000 people, according to officials.
How do satellites see the Earth? And what do they find out about what's happening down here? Check out these impressive photos of natural disasters to discover for yourself.
Image: NASA
Only tears of sand remain
Earth observation satellites such as the European Space Agency's Proba-V collect daily images that allow for the tracking of environmental changes over time. The images above - taken in April 2014, July 2015 and January 2016 (left to right) - offer crystal-clear insight into the gradual evaporation of Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second largest lake - due at least in part to climate change.
Image: ESA/Belspo
The beast has awoken
No matter how long volcanoes sleep, they're always in a bad mood when they wake up. The International Space Station was passing overhead when the Sarychev volcano, located in the Kuril Islands of Russia, erupted in 2009. Astronauts were able to snap a picture through a hole in the clouds. From dense ash to clouds of condensed water, virtually all natural phenomena can be examined from outer space.
Image: NASA
Don't play with fire
Every year, wildfires devastate the landscape - and ecology - in numerous countries around the world. Too often, these are caused by humans. This was also the case in Indonesia, where farmers burned peat rainforest areas for agriculture. On the island of Borneo and Sumatra, satellites detected fire hot spots in September 2015, and the plume of grey smoke that triggered air quality alerts.
Image: NASA/J. Schmaltz
German kids misbehaved
In Germany, parents warn their children that if they don't finish their meals, it's going to rain. And indeed, in 2013 it rained, so much that some of central Europe's major rivers overflowed their banks. As shown in this image from 2013, the Elbe burst its banks following unprecedented rainfall. In the photo, muddy water covers the area around Wittenberg, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Image: NASA/J. Allen
At the eye of the hurricane
A strong storm can cause irreparable damage through intense winds and storm surges from the sea. Space-based information is crucial in following development of such storms: intensity, the direction it's moving, wind speed … in the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico, this satellite image helped determine how tropical storm Sandra reached winds of 160 kilometers per hour by November 25, 2015.
Image: NASA/J. Schmaltz
Melting away from under us
Satellites also play a key role in monitoring climate change and, inevitably, the process of melting ice. From space, scientists were able to document how several glaciers around the globe have receded - as well as the subsequent rise in sea level. This photograph, taken from the International Space Station, shows the retreat of the Upsala glacier in Argentine Patagonia from 2002 to 2013.
Image: NASA
Hold your breath!
Dust often covers remote deserts - however, in September 2015, satellites offered this impressive view of Middle East areas enveloped by a dust storm, or haboob, affecting large populated regions. What satellites can observe from space supports air quality sensors on the ground to understand patterns on how the storms start and develop. These findings can improve forecasting methods.
Image: NASA/J. Schmaltz
'Naked mountain'
These are the words NASA used to describe the lack of snow on California's Mount Shasta, a crucial source of water for the region. Images documenting drought over the past years have consistently been showing brown mountains that should be white, and bare earth where people seek water. As ice melts, drought grows.
