Cyclone Sidr - a category 5 storm (Saffir-Simpson Scale)
"Storms batter the country of Bangladesh each year causing hundreds of deaths. Perhaps the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, the Bhola Cyclone, hit the Ganges Delta in November 1970 leaving up to half a million people dead. Another powerful storm killed over 100,000 people in 1991."
"According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC), Sidr intensified to a category 5 storm on Thursday morning. Winds were reported to be 155mph (250km/h) with gusts 190mph (305km/h). This is the strongest classification of storm according to the Saffir-Simpson Scale."
"Bangladesh's director general of disaster management, Masood Siddiqui, told the BBC that the death toll had reached 2,000 people.
"We are expecting that thousands of dead bodies may be found within a few days," Shekhar Chandra Das, deputy head of the government's disaster management office, told AFP.
"We have not been able to collect information about casualties in many remote and impassable places due to the disruption to communications," he said."
Sources:
BBC Weather, 15 Nov 2007;
"Bangladesh toll more than 2,000," BBC News, 18 Nov 2007.
See also these Wikipedia entries:
Image: Tropical Cyclone Sidr (06B) in the Bay of Bengal, as seen by the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite on November 14 at 0445 UTC; source: NASA