BALASORE, INDIA  -  At least 1.1 million people on India’s eastern coast hunkered down in storm shelters ahead of a powerful cyclone set to hammer the low-lying region early Friday morning. Cyclone Dana is likely to hit the coasts of West Bengal and Odisha states -- home to around 150 million people -- as a “severe cyclonic storm”, India’s weather bureau said.

It predicts winds gusting up to 120 kilometres (74 miles) per hour to cause “major damage” to thatch-roofed houses, which are common on the coast. Major airports have shut overnight, including key travel hub Kolkata, where heavy rain lashed the sprawling megacity.

India’s navy said two ships were “standing by with supplies and rescue and diving teams”.

The eye of the storm is predicted to make landfall early Friday (from 1830 GMT Thursday), near the coal-exporting port of Dhamra.

An AFP photographer in Balasore, about 70 kilometres north from the area of expected landfall, reported ferocious rains and trees bending in gales.

Government disaster response teams drove the streets, broadcasting warnings from loudspeakers urging people to take shelter.

The storm will also hit neighbouring Bangladesh, where the leader of the interim government Muhammad Yunus said that “extensive preparations” had been made.

Crashing waves are expected to inundate swathes of coastal areas, with water predicted to surge up to two metres (6.5 feet) above usual tide levels.

Odisha’s health minister Mukesh Mahaling told AFP that “nearly a million people from the coastal areas” had been taken to cyclone centres.

West Bengal government minister Bankim Chandra Hazra said more than 100,000 people had moved there.