Visibility Watch is our weekly collection of the road and weather news that decided whether riders got seen or got missed. This week had a clear theme: the season flipped. The south spent the week under rain alerts, Delhi lost its clear air for the first time since July, and by Friday the Bay of Bengal had started building a storm. Six stories made the cut between 19 and 25 October, and every one of them is a visibility story.
Monday 19 October: orange alert over Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karaikal
The IMD opened the week with an orange alert for heavy to very heavy rain over Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karaikal, with heavy spells also forecast for Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and south interior Karnataka, as reported by NewsOnAir. An orange alert is the IMD saying be prepared, not merely be aware. For a rider that means the evening commute can turn into spray, mist on visors and glare off wet tar in the space of ten minutes. The lesson from alert days is simple: ride with your lights on from the first kilometre, not from the first drop.
Tuesday 20 October: Australia reminds everyone whose month this is
October is Motorcycle Awareness Month in New South Wales, and the New England Times carried the numbers behind the campaign: motorcycles are 3.7 per cent of registered vehicles in NSW, yet riders are about one in five road deaths and almost a quarter of serious injuries there. The state goes as far as requiring learner riders to wear an approved high visibility vest or jacket on every ride. Different country, same physics. The campaign asks drivers to look twice. The rider’s half of that bargain is to give them something worth seeing: clean lamps, bright gear, and a position on the road that keeps you out of blind spots.
Wednesday 21 October: Delhi’s haze season begins, and the rulebook follows
Delhi NCR woke on Wednesday to its first haze blanket of the season. Air quality slipped into the poor category for the first time since 13 July, and the morning haze visibly cut sight lines across the capital, per The Hawk. By the same afternoon it was official: the Commission for Air Quality Management invoked Stage 1 of the Graded Response Action Plan across Delhi NCR after the AQI touched 244, with forecasts keeping the air in the poor band for days, as ANI reported.
Haze is sneakier than fog. It does not feel like weather, but it flattens contrast, and a dark bike on a grey road simply stops standing out, especially at dawn and dusk when most commutes happen. This air is now staying for the season. Wipe your tail lamp and indicators every few days: in haze season they film over faster than you think, and a dim lamp in flat light is halfway to no lamp at all.
Thursday 22 October: Kerala stacks alerts into the weekend
Onmanorama reported orange alerts on Ernakulam, Thrissur, Malappuram and Kozhikode on Thursday, yellow alerts across every other district, and a ladder of warnings running right through today, Sunday, when seven districts sit under orange. The heavy rainfall warning holds until 27 October, fishermen have been told to stay ashore, and the IMD’s own advisory names reduced visibility and waterlogging among the hazards. When the rain is this persistent, the risk is not one downpour, it is fatigue: hours of spray, misted mirrors and drivers peering through smeared windscreens. Stretch your following distance, brake earlier than feels necessary, and assume the car behind you has not registered your brake light until you see it slow.
Friday 23 October: the Bay of Bengal starts spinning
The IMD’s Director General confirmed that a low pressure area formed over the east central Bay of Bengal on Friday morning, forecast to become a depression on Saturday, a deep depression on Sunday, and a cyclonic storm by Monday morning, reaching near the north Andhra Pradesh and south Odisha coasts around 28 October, per ANI. Rain is expected to build on the coast from 26 October, with the heaviest spells, including extremely heavy rain, forecast for the 28th, and fishermen warned off the sea through the 29th. If you ride the east coast, this is the week to plan around the weather rather than through it. Watch the IMD updates, finish essential rides early in the day, and when the wind picks up, parking the bike and waiting is a decision, not a defeat.
The week in one line
Rain in the south, haze in the north and a storm on the way: three different skies, and the same job in all of them, which is being seen early enough to matter. Our guides on what your tail light actually does and finding the gap in your bike’s night visibility go deeper on the fixes that cost nothing. And if your bike’s rear disappears in rain or haze, a pair of Kroozer strobe pods gives it a pulse that reads unmistakably as a motorcycle, not just another smudge of light. Be visible. Be home.
