200110 Indian Ocean Weather Reports

Indian Ocean Weather Reports
Report No. 200110

Whilst anchored off a port on the east coast of India, the area to the south of us around Chennai (Madras) was being threatened by a cyclonic storm which was due to reach the coast the following morning. The weather at that time had been fairly poor with a strong north easterly wind, rough seas and overcast skies. During the afternoon I called the Port Control to ask whether they had any warnings out for the area and what they expected the storm to be doing. The port controller asked if we had received any weather reports. As it happened, we had just received an EGC message via Sat-C. Instead of the port being able to give me information we read the weather report over the radio whilst the controller wrote it down. Needless to say, he was unable to offer any information beyond that which we had just passed to him.