The cyclone season most people in South Asia remember is not the monsoon. It is the few weeks after it. From October to December, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea produce some of the most destructive storms on Earth, and several of the deadliest cyclones in recorded history formed in exactly this window.
This year, the basin has been busy without producing a single named storm. Seven systems formed in 2026 up to the end of September, and none of them reached the strength that earns a name. That is why the next name on the list, Arnab, has still not been used — and why it will be all over the news the first time a system crosses the line.
How cyclone names are chosen
Storms in the North Indian Ocean are named from a list agreed by the 13 countries of the WMO/ESCAP Panel on Tropical Cyclones, published in 2020. Each country contributed 13 names, for 169 in all, and they are used strictly in order. The India Meteorological Department, as the regional specialised meteorological centre, assigns them.
A name is given only when a system reaches cyclonic storm strength: sustained winds of at least 63 km/h (34 knots), often rounded to 65 km/h. Below that, it is a depression or a deep depression, numbered but not named — however much rain it brings.
The next names, in order, are:
- Arnab — contributed by Bangladesh
- Murasu — India
- Akvan — Iran
- Kaani — Maldives
- Ngamann — Myanmar
- Sail — Oman
- Sahab — Pakistan
Names are used once. A storm that does great damage does not "retire" a name the way Atlantic hurricanes do, because no name in this list is ever reused in the first place.
A storm with a name is not more dangerous than one without
The naming threshold is about wind. It says nothing about rain or the sea. Unnamed depressions regularly cause deadly flooding, and in late September 2026 a deep depression that was widely — and wrongly — called "Cyclone Arnab" in the media brought heavy rain to the Odisha and Andhra Pradesh coast without ever becoming a cyclone.
Two practical rules follow:
- Follow the warning, not the name. Act on the colour-coded warnings from IMD, the Pakistan Meteorological Department or the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, whether or not the system has a name yet.
- Be wary of names appearing early. A name in a headline before the official announcement is a guess. Only the met office can name a storm.
Why the deadliest storms come after the monsoon
Before and after the monsoon, the sea is warm and the winds high in the atmosphere are weak and fairly uniform, so a storm can organise and deepen without being torn apart. During the monsoon itself, strong winds that change with height usually stop systems from becoming intense cyclones. That is why the Bay of Bengal has two cyclone seasons — April to June, and October to December — and why the second one often produces the strongest storms.
The Bay of Bengal adds a geographic danger. It is shallow near the coast and funnel-shaped towards the low-lying deltas of Bangladesh and eastern India, which lets the sea pile up into a storm surge several metres high. Most of the people killed in the region's worst cyclones drowned in that surge, not in the wind. Our guide to cyclone preparation explains why the category number misleads people about exactly this.
The Arabian Sea produces fewer cyclones, but they are not rare, and they matter for Karachi, the Sindh coast, Gujarat, Oman and Yemen. The Pakistan Meteorological Department issues its own cyclone watches and alerts for the Sindh and Makran coasts.
What the official tracks show, and how to read them
A forecast track is drawn as a line with a widening cone around it. The cone is the uncertainty in where the centre will go, not the size of the storm. Heavy rain and surge reach well outside it, and the right-hand side of a storm moving north (in the Northern Hemisphere) usually carries the strongest winds and the highest surge.
- Watch the landfall time, not just the place. A landfall at high tide makes the surge worse.
- Evacuate when told, not when you see the sea rise. Surge arrives fast and often at night.
- Do not go out in the calm. The eye can bring a lull of half an hour or more, followed by winds from the opposite direction.
What our records show, and what they miss
Our cyclone tracker records named storms and official alerts from the UN's GDACS and national warning feeds, and our flood archive picks up the flooding that depressions leave behind. Unnamed depressions that never reach a global alert system can be missing until news reports them. The forecasts page carries official outlooks where they exist, and Bangladesh, India and Pakistan each have their own page. How each source is used is set out on our method page, and the records are free to reuse from our open data page.
The short version
- October to December is the main cyclone season in the Bay of Bengal, and often its deadliest.
- No storm in the basin reached cyclone strength in 2026 up to the end of September, so the next name is still Arnab (Bangladesh), then Murasu, Akvan, Kaani, Ngamann, Sail and Sahab.
- A name is given at 63 km/h winds; it says nothing about rain or surge.
- Act on official warnings whether or not a storm has a name.
- Surge, not wind, causes most deaths. Evacuate when told, and stay in during the calm of the eye.
