Cyclone Fani hits Sri Lanka with heavy rainfall

Torrential rain hit Sri Lanka's capital on Tuesday as cyclone Fani heads toward the coast of eastern India and is expected to intensify into an "extremely severe" storm.

Fani is generating maximum sustained winds of 85 knots, or about 157 kph, according to a storm advisory from the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

The storm is currently in the Bay of Bengal about 690 kilometres east-southeast of Chennai and moved north-northwest at a speed of 16 km per hour over the past six hours, the India Meteorological Office said.

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The office has forecast heavy rainfall in Odisha and in some parts of the state of Andhra Pradesh in the next few days with state government asking officials to be alert and evacuate people if the storm intensifies and makes landfall.

Meanwhile, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a 'yellow warning' for Odisha coast predicting heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places such as Boudh, Kalahandi, Sambalpur, Deogarh, and Sundargarh.