Wind, Rain Pound India as Massive Cyclone Hits A massive, powerful cyclone was hammering India's eastern coastline with heavy rains and destructive winds Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of people living in the region moved inland and took shelter, hoping to ride out the dangerous storm. Roads were all but empty as high waves lashed the coastline of Orissa state, which will bear the brunt of Cyclone Phailin. By midafternoon, wind gusts were so strong that they could blow over grown men. Along the coast, seawater was pushing inland, swamping villages where many people survive as subsistence farmers in mud and thatch huts. As the cyclone swept across the Bay of Bengal toward the Indian coast, satellite images showed its spinning tails covering an area larger than France. Images appeared to show the storm making landfall early Saturday night. In Behrampur, a town about 10 kilometers (7 miles) inland from where the eye of the storm was expected to hit, the sky blackened quickly around the time of landfall, with heavy winds and rains pelting the empty streets. Estimates of the storm's power had dropped slightly, with the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii showing maximum sustained winds of about 240 kilometers per hour (150 miles per hour), with gusts up to 296 kph (184 mph). The storm, though, remained exceedingly strong and dangerous. By Friday evening, some 420,000 people had been moved to higher ground or shelters in Orissa, and 100,000 more in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, said Indian Home Secretary Anil Goswami. "A storm this large can't peter out that fast," said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist at Weather Bell, a private U.S. weather firm. L.S. Rathore, the head of the Indian Meteorological Department, predicted a storm surge of 3-3.5 meters (10-11.5 feet), but Maue said that even in the best-case scenario there would be a surge of 7-9 meters (20-30 feet). A storm surge - the giant wall of water that that a cyclone blasts ashore - is the big killer in such storms. Phailin already has been large and powerful for nearly 36 hours, he said, and those winds have built up a tremendous amount of surge. A few hours before the storm was to hit Saturday evening, about 200 villagers were jammed into a two-room schoolhouse in the village of Subalaya, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the coast, where local emergency officials were distributing food and water. The roads were almost completely empty of traffic by Saturday afternoon, but two trucks pulled up to the school with more evacuees. Children shivered in the rain as they stepped down from the vehicles, following women carrying bags jammed with possessions. Many of the people had fled low-lying villages for the shelter of the concrete school. But some had also left behind relatives who feared the storm could wipe out lifetimes of work. "My son had to stay back with his wife because of the cattle and belongings," said 70-year-old Kaushalya Jena, weeping in fear inside the makeshift shelter. I don't know if they are safe. In Bhubaneshwar, the Orissa state capital, government workers and volunteers were putting together hundreds of thousands of food packages to be distributed at relief camps. The state's top official, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, appealed for people to leave their homes if they are ordered.