A low-pressure area that is tipped to turn into Cyclone Asani was positioned over the southeast Bay of Bengal and the adjoining east equatorial Indian Ocean on Thursday.
The Met office reiterated that the projected path of the storm was too far from the east coast of India to have any impact.
The image of the expected trajectory, shared by the IMD headquarters, showed the system was quite far off the east coast of India.
The cyclone is expected to “reach near Bangladesh-north Myanmar coasts around morning of March 22”, said the new bulletin. A day ago, the IMD bulletin had said the storm would arrive near land on March 23.
The system is expected to turn into a depression by March 20 and a cyclone by March 21.
“On March 23 and 24, some clouds and easterly winds — remnants of the cyclone — might reach Bengal and cause some clouding and rain,” a Met official said.
Asked about the possibility of a deviation from the expected path, G.K. Das, the director of IMD, Kolkata, said: “In the past 100 years, there have been about half a dozen cyclones on the Bay of Bengal in March. None of them headed towards the east coast.”