The landfall process of severe cyclonic storm Dana began on Odisha coast on Thursday night and was expected to continue till Friday morning, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

The storm moved north-northwest at a speed of 15 kmph over the past six hours before making landfall between Bhitarkanika in Kendrapara district and Dhamra in Bhadrak, with wind speeds of around 110 kmph, a senior IMD official said.

“The landfall process has commenced and the forward sector of the wall cloud region is entering into land. The process will continue till Friday morning," Umashankar Das, senior scientist at the Regional Meteorological Centre in Bhubaneswar, told PTI.

When the centre of the system reaches land, wind speeds are expected to reach 120 kmph, he said.

Das noted that the landfall process of the weather system will last for about four to five hours.

"The system is under continuous surveillance of the Doppler weather radar at Paradip," he said.

Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had enquired about the Odisha government’s preparedness to tackle the situation arising out of the cyclone.