At least 33 people have been killed, with scores of fishermen missing and tens of thousands of residents displaced after storms pounded the Indian and Bangladeshi coasts in the Bay of Bengal.
At least 27 people were killed in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh which bore the brunt of the storms on Monday and Tuesday, while six people died in neighbouring Orissa state, the officials said, revising earlier figures.
The downpours left some 50,000 people displaced or homeless in Andhra Pradesh, an official of the state disaster management cell told AFP.
The rains submerged roads and railway tracks and strong winds uprooted hundreds of trees and electricity poles, he said on condition of anonymity.
The airport in the port city of Vishakapatnam was closed Wednesday for the third consecutive day, he said.
In Orissa the administration evacuated 12,000 people from low-lying areas in 10 of the state's 30 districts, said Tarunkanti Mishra, state revenue secretary.
He said more than 25,000 hectares (61,776 acres) of crops had been destroyed due to rains which have lashed the state since Friday.
The weather office in the Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar predicted more rains for the province in the next 48 hours, another state official said.
Indian coastguard vessels were on the lookout for 73 fishermen reported missing from the two eastern states, he said.
In southern Bangladesh, tidal waves of up to four feet (1.3 metres) Monday swamped some coastal villages and forced some 12,000 people to flee their homes, officials in Dhaka said.
By Wednesday most of these people had returned home after the waters subsided.
Shamsul Alam, relief officer of Barguna district where many fishing trawlers are based, said at least 26 fishermen had been reported missing but it was not clear if they had perished or were merely unaccounted for.
A further 300 to 400 fishermen from the area were at sea at the time of the storm and had not yet reported back to their landing station, although he added it was too early to say whether they had drowned.
"We have reports that at least 60 trawlers made emergency anchor at Dublar Char (island) in the Sundarbans (a coastal mangrove forest) and some of them travelled as far as the Indian state of Orissa for shelter," he said.
Alam said officials did not yet plan to list the trawlers and their fishermen as missing since on previous occasions they had returned home within a month.
Andhra Pradesh, meanwhile, was bracing for more havoc.
"We are keeping a close watch on the flood situation," state Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhar Reddy told NDTV news channel.
Rescue teams and air force helicopters have been asked to help marooned people. Some 35 relief camps have been opened and medical teams pressed into operation, Reddy said.
Storms and cyclones which form over the Bay of Bengal in September and October every year kill hundreds of people and destroy cattle and crops in India's eastern states and in Bangladesh.
A super-cyclone that hit Orissa in 1999 claimed about 10,000 lives.
PHOTO CAPTION
Bangladeshi rickshaw riders make their way through floodwaters in Dhaka, in July 2005. (AFP)