Landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) cause severe damage to infrastructure and economic losses in India. Extreme rainfall from TCs can lead to flooding, which disrupts the lives of people and their socio-economic well-being. Despite the severe hazards caused by TCs in India, their impacts on river basin-scale flooding are not well examined. Here, we use cyclone tracks from India Meteorological Department (IMD) and ERA5-Land reanalysis to identify the drivers of TC induced floods in India. We select TCs that affected the Subarnarekha, Brahmani, Mahanadi, and Vamshadhara river basins during the 1981–2019 period. We estimated return periods of extreme daily and hourly rainfall and total runoff associated with TCs. We examined the role of antecedent soil moisture on floods caused by TCs. Our results show that the distribution of extreme rainfall over a basin from TCs depend on the translation speed, track length, and size of the TC. Severe flooding in the basins is strongly linked to antecedent soil moisture conditions. Regardless of extreme rainfall, flooding due to TCs during the pre-monsoon (April–May) is less likely because of dry antecedent soil moisture conditions. On the other hand, TCs can lead to severe flooding during the summer monsoon (June–September) period due to relatively wetter antecedent conditions. In the post-monsoon season (October–November), the severity of flooding caused by TCs is higher than the pre-monsoon season, and as we move further into the post-monsoon this severity reduces. Our findings highlight the need to monitor the land-surface characteristics and TC track prediction to identify the potential of flooding from landfalling TCs.

登陆的热带气旋 (TC) 对印度的基础设施造成严重破坏和经济损失。来自 TC 的极端降雨会导致洪水泛滥，从而扰乱人们的生活及其社会经济福祉。尽管热带气旋在印度造成了严重危害，但它们对流域规模洪水的影响并未得到很好的研究。在这里，我们使用印度气象局 (IMD) 的气旋轨迹和 ERA5-Land 再分析来确定印度 TC 诱发洪水的驱动因素。我们选择了 1981-2019 年期间影响 Subarnarekha、Brahmani、Mahanadi 和 Vamshadhara 河流域的 TC。我们估计了与 TC 相关的极端每日和每小时降雨量和总径流的回归期。我们研究了前期土壤水分对 TC 引起的洪水的作用。我们的研究结果表明，台风在流域上的极端降雨分布取决于台风的平移速度、轨迹长度和大小。流域的严重洪水与先前的土壤湿度条件密切相关。无论极端降雨如何，由于前期土壤湿度条件干燥，季风前（4 月至 5 月）TCs 引起的洪水不太可能发生。另一方面，由于前期条件相对湿润，TCs 可能在夏季风（6-9 月）期间导致严重的洪水。在季风后（10-11 月），TC 引起的洪水严重程度高于季风前，随着我们进一步进入季风后，这种严重性降低。