More than Six million people could be impacted by Tropical Cyclone Vayu, which is barreling towards northwest India and expected to make landfall in the next 24 hours.

As cyclone ‘Vayu’ advances towards the Gujarat coast, the state government launched a massive evacuation exercise to shift about 300,000 people from low-lying areas of Saurashtra and Kutch regions, officials said Wednesday.

According to the latest weather information, the cyclone has intensified into a “very severe cyclonic storm” and is located around 340 km south of Gujarat’s Veraval coast.

Thirty-nine National Disaster Response Force teams — each with about 45 people — have been deployed to help local authorities with evacuation, search, rescue and relief operations. The army has 34 teams on stand-by.