In order to make weather forecasting more meaningful and effective,particularly to the rural folk,the citys centre of India Meteorological Department (IMD) has decided to use FM radio,short messaging service (SMS) and mobile applications like WatsApp for disseminating weather-related information and warnings. It will also display the information on its official website in Gujarati. Thats not all. Weather forecasting is also expected to get more localised. A pilot project was put in place by the Met Department to zero-in on block-level weather forecasting from the present district-level analysis. These were some of the solutions and future measures that were discussed during the first users meet and awareness programme organised by IMD on Thursday. As per instructions from the IMD headquarters,our team has already translated most of the terms into Gujarati. Once this is complete,the centre will be able to provide weather information in the local language. This has been a long pending request from the rural folk,especially farmers who are extensive users of our forecast, said regional director Jayanta Sarkar. This is a very effective step by the IMD. Many a time,information regarding rainfall is not conveyed to farmers due to language issues. Even if that happens,we get them through phones and interactive voice response system. But sometimes that too is limited, said Rakesh Patel,a farmer who had come to attend the meet from Vodoth village in Sabarkantha district. For instance,this monsoon I was in regular touch with the met department through phone calls and the information was further disseminated to the other farmers in our village through SMS, he added. Certain terms will also be explained with legends. For instance,heavy rain and very heavy rain will be explained in rain measurement describing how much denotes heavy and very heavy. These are some of the terms that are seldom understood by the common man. Even staff at our department are clueless about these terms. It will be useful for the control room staff to know these terms, said Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation city engineer Tarun Lad,who was one of the participants during the meet. Another user-friendly initiative being worked out is more localised weather forecasting. Some of the blocks of Anand district have been included in the pilot study. At present,a pilot project by the scientists at New Delhi has been started by IMD,where block-level weather forecasting is being experimented. Moving down from state level to region specific and the present district level forecasting,the aim is to provide more localised and relevant information, revealed BK Bandyopadhyay,DDGM (Services) IMD,New Delhi.
