UPDATE 1-Indian cyclone fizzles out, heavy rains likely

By Syed Amin Jafri

HYDERABAD, India, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A cyclone threatening India's southern coast has almost fizzled out and is no longer expected to hit land, weather officials said on Thursday.

The storm, about 150 km (94 miles) southeast of the port of Machilipatnam in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, had weakened to a low pressure area by Thursday, said the chief of the meteorological centre in the state capital, Hyderabad.

"Since the system has weakened considerably at the same spot where it lay in the Bay of Bengal, there is no question of it crossing the south Andhra coast...," the centre's director, C.V.V. Bhadram, told Reuters.

Weather officials said earlier they expected the storm, which had lurked in the Bay of Bengal since the weekend, to hit Andhra Pradesh by Thursday afternoon, packing winds of up to 100 km (63 miles) per hour.

Bhadram said there would be heavy rains in some areas in coastal Andhra Pradesh and interior Rayalaseema but there would not be any gales along the shore.

The state's top bureaucrat, Chief Secretary P.V. Rao, also ruled out the possibility of a cyclone striking the coast but urged government officials not to let their guard down.

"There is no more threat of cyclone since the storm has weakened considerably," Rao said after reviewing the situation.

The cyclone threat came a year after a cyclone killed nearly 10,000 people in the neighbouring state of Orissa.

Authorities have so far evacuated 55,000 people from coastal districts in the path of the cyclone, when it hovered about 350 km (218 miles) east of the coastal town of Nellore.

The army, air force and navy had been put on standby to aid rescue operations or further evacuations.

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