Weather watchers slam lack of communication; IMD blames tech glitch, denies data was withheld
Hyderabad: Feed from the Doppler radar operated by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in Telangana went offline for public access this week, prompting concerns from weather watchers, independent forecasters and residents.
Independent forecaster T. Balaji, ‘Telangana Weatherman’, flagged the issue on social media, saying, “The Hyderabad Doppler radar is now accessible only to IMD staff,” and accused the agency of withholding data at a crucial time. His posts quickly gained traction, with citizens confirming that radar images were missing from both the IMD website and the Mausam app.
The matter gathered momentum on Friday, with Balaji’s post followed by similar concerns from other forecasters, including ‘Hyderabad Rains’, who questioned why Hyderabad’s radar feed was restricted while other radars across India remained publicly accessible.
Balaji alleged that “the whole administration” had suffered due to the unavailability of the radar feed and criticised IMD for not informing the public earlier. He pointed out that the department’s own bulletins carried radar images, proving that the system was functional internally.
As the debate intensified, IMD Hyderabad attributed the disruption to a “technical problem from the BSNL side for sending to the public” and said a complaint had been lodged. However, its additional remark, “Do not panic the public with wrong intentions,” was later deleted, fuelling further speculation.
By Friday afternoon, the radar feed was restored, and IMD issued a formal statement denying that the outage had been deliberate.
“It has come to our notice that some individuals are spreading falsehoods and making false accusations that IMD has intentionally stopped uploading radar images on the IMD website during the bad weather period yesterday,” the statement said. It added, “Our radar was fully operational during the bad weather period yesterday, but we had a communication failure from 0900 UTC (2.30 pm IST) of 06.08.25, due to which our radar products could not be uploaded to our website. However, we were continuously issuing alert bulletins all through the day with live radar images from the office.”
Balaji, in response to the statement, maintained that the absence of timely communication from IMD had caused avoidable confusion. Public discussion has since moved to whether outages in critical weather systems should come with immediate official advisories to prevent speculation.
