Tropical Cyclone Sidr is barrelling northward in the Bay of Bengal. Latest advisory has winds of 130 kts. (cat 4), and T numbers of 7.0/7.0 would support cat 5 intensity. It is heading for a landfall in less than 24 hours in probably the worst place on earth a cyclone could hit, over western Bangladesh. Storms that have hit here have historically been marked by extremely high death tolls (500,000 in a 1970 storm) and this will likely be no exception. The narrowing bay causes a funneling effect to produce extremely high storm surges here, and the very low-lying coastline allows the surges to go very far inland. Increasing wind shear is expected to cause the storm to weaken before landfall, but it will likely be too late to prevent this from being a devastating storm.