Wednesday, Jun 06, 2007
MUSCAT, Oman (AP)--A powerful cyclone lashed Oman's coast and capital with rare heavy rains and wind Wednesday, after thousands of people fled low-lying areas.
The strongest recorded storm to hit the Arabian peninsula was moving next toward southern Iran, but was weakening and was expected to skirt the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
No deaths had been reported by midmorning Wednesday across Oman or its capital, Muscat, where visibility was near-zero early Wednesday but where rains began to subside slightly by midmorning. Rains were expected to intensify again midday Wednesday as the heaviest part of the storm moved closer to Muscat.
Electricity was out in some parts of the city and many roads were closed, but Omani officials said most of the country's oilfields, to the northwest of the capital, were still operating.
In Iran, authorities evacuated hundreds of people living in the port city of Chabahr on the coast of the Sea of Oman, believed to be next in the cyclone's path.
The storm had weakened considerably since Tuesday. Maximum sustained winds of about 90 miles an hour were reported with gusts to nearly 104 miles an hour, regional weather services said.
As of 0300 GMT, the storm was reported about 100 nautical miles (115 miles/185 kilometers) southeast of the Omani capital of Muscat moving in a northwesterly direction, the services said. A tracking map posted on the Web site of the U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center predicted the center of the storm would skirt the capital Muscat after 1200 GMT Wednesday.
Blogger Vijayakumar Narayanan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that many city streets were flooded and that visibility was near-zero in Muscat early Wednesday.
Oman's eastern provinces were cut off, with heavy rains making the roads unusable and communication lines severed. "We have no communication with them, nothing," said a senior police officer.
Parts of Muscat had no electricity, said government official Sheik Mohamed bin Saif. But Nasser bin Khamees Al Jashmy, an official at the ministry of oil and natural gas, said only a single small oilfield had been affected by the cyclone.
Cyclone Gonu, which had been churning northwest through the Indian Ocean, had earlier reached the Omani coastal towns of Sur and Ra's al-Hadd.
Gonu was expected to skirt the region's biggest oil installations but could disrupt shipping in the Straits of Hormuz.
"If the storm hits Iran, it's a much bigger story than Oman, given how much bigger an oil producer Iran is," said Antoine Haff of FIMAT USA, a brokerage unit of Societe Generale. "At a minimum, it's likely to affect tanker traffic.
Gonu was expected to hit land in southeastern Iran late Wednesday or early Thursday, according to AccuWeather.com meteorologist Donn Washburn.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center predicted rough seas in the Straits of Hormuz, the transport route for two-fifths of the world's oil and the southern entrance to the Gulf.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-06-07 0746GMT
