Top

Amateurs turn weather cocks

While the tornado spotted by Uthandi-resident Rob­ert Gagarin on East Coast Road.

Chennai: While the tornado spotted by Uthandi-resident Rob­ert Gagarin on East Coast Road in September this year made many heads turn in Chennai, several amateur weathermen ha­ve taken to weather tracking in a big way in the city. DC caught up with a we­a­ther blogger, Ham ra­d­io operator, astro-meteorologist and an angler interested in tracking the weather.

Architect S. Ramachan­d­ran is a self-confessed astro-meteorologist. The 58-year-old got enticed by as­tro­logy as a student and he found a lot of sci­en­­tific interpretations in astrology, claimed to be useful in predicting weat­her. According to him, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has weather data for only the last 100 years, while the monsoon has behaved differently in the past 1.5 lakh years.

“With the help of planetary positions and its behaviour, we can find the weather patterns,” said Ramachandran, who added that he had used astrology to verify the weather models that occurred in the last 100 years. While Ramac­ha­­ndran’s predictions have a success rate of ab­o­ut 70 per cent, he is continuing in his pursuit to get more data to forecast precisely.

Ham radio is IT professional K. Rajesh’s first love. The 44-year-old has specialised in transcending borders using minimum equipment. The amateur radio operators are very useful, especially during distress times. “In course of our Ham operations, we learnt to track satellites and it helps predict and track weather,” he explained.

Rajesh, who uses the call sign VU3RGK as a Ham radio operator, bel­i­e­ves in using non-conve­n­ti­o­nal wisdom like astrology, animal behaviour, even smell of air and historical proverbs and so­n­gs that have been passed do­wn the generations, al­o­ng with usual patterns, to predict weather.

R. Pradeep John, who works at the Tamil Na­du Urban Infra­st­ru­ct­u­re Financial Services Li­m­­ited, follows weather as a passion. “Initially, I us­ed to study sea level pre­s­s­u­re and wind speed to tr­a­ck cyclones. Now, with the advent of Internet and computer models, I am able to even post cyclone track before it actually occurs,” he said.

Pradeep John (31) is a senior member of Keaweather blogging community. Robert Gagarin (58), who runs a food processing business, never fails to take a picture of the evening sky. “I am an angler (sports fishing) and I follow the clouds before going for fishing every evening,” he said.

( Source : dc )
Next Story