IMD mulls digital channel, forecast in local languages

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is mulling to have its own studio and digital weather channel to disseminate weather information round the clock. The weather warnings will soon be issued in various local languages.

While some parts of the country have witnessed 200 mm of rainfall in the last few years, the MeT is gearing up to predict rainfall of more than 500 mm.

At present, the IMD is giving colour coded district level warnings in different categories like yellow, orange and red depending on the severity of the event.

“Rainfall more than 200 mm is categorised as extremely heavy rainfall events. Due to climate change, the number of extremely rainfall events is on a rise and unprecedented exceptional heavy rainfall events, greater than 500-600 mm, cannot also be ruled out. Our vision should stress upon to predict how intense an extremely heavy rainfall event would be,” officials from the IMD said.

The vision document of the IMD released by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 14 stated that it was a challenge to predict accurate rainfall in hilly regions and in villages.

IMD Director General Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said, “In the next two-three years, the IMD plans to augment weather observation. Presently, we have 39 weather radars which will be increased to 126. We are looking at installing a wider network of radars, wind profilers and radiometres for better observations. At least 15 wind profilers will be installed which can measure wind speed and direction and temperature. This will replace weather balloons.”