Just when it was needed the most, the Doppler radar at the Indian Meteorological Department’s weather station at Begumpet is dead. The radar’s ability to present real-time imagery of clouds and rain is something the GHMC depends heavily on to predict minute-to-minute, location by location and likely intensity of rain.
According to IMD director Dr K. Nagaratna, an electrical voltage issue caused problems due to which the radar was taken offline. “We have called a technician for repairs and the person is expected to arrive on Monday to attend to the equipment,” she said.
“This could not have happened at a worse time for us,” a senior GHMC official told Deccan Chronicle on Sunday. “The system has been on the blink since the rains started on Tuesday and has hit our ability to warn people as to exactly where the rain would occur and how intense it could be,” the official said.
“On Saturday, we could not predict that some areas would get 18 cm of rain. If the radar was working, we would have been prepared for this,” the official added.
This has impacted the predictive ability of the GHMC to position its relief and rescue teams in the most vulnerable areas ahead of rains.
“The IMD says that it will get the radar repaired and is waiting for someone to come. We are ready to fly the person down if the IMD is agreeable,” the official added.
GHMC officials are now depending on data provided by the radar at Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The problem is that data from this radar does not provide the detailed localised information that the IMD’s Doppler radar could.
“We are using the Mausam app of the IMD and Windy, another app, and putting together the information from these along with data from Machilipatnam and trying to do our best to predict rainfall and outcomes,” the GHMC official explained.
“This is laborious, time consuming and the best we can do is 70 to 75 per cent accuracy. We expect pretty strong rains over the next two to three days. It looks unlikely that the IMD’s Doppler radar would be repaired in this period,” he said.
