Hudhud: Spot on twice, India's Met Dept beats global weathermen hollow

Bhubaneswar: Others may have a more enviable international profile, but for the second time in the last one year, India Meteorological Centre (IMD) has proved that it has no peer when it comes to forecasting cyclonic storms in the Indian seas. As it had done in the case of Cyclone Phailin exactly a year ago, IMD hit the bull’s eye when it came to tracking the course of Cyclone Hudhud, assessing its intensity and predicting the place and timing of its landfall. While even the US-based Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC), which is among the most trusted weather forecast stations in the world, got it all wrong, IMD was spot on with its prediction on Hudhud - not just about the place of the landfall (Vishakhapatnam), but also the timing (shortly before noon) and the velocity of wind accompanying it (170-180 km/hr, gusting up to 195 km/hr). [caption id=“attachment_1753697” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  IMD’s forecast on Cyclone Hudhud having proved remarkably accurate. AFP[/caption] The importance of the accuracy of forecast of cyclonic storms — or any natural disaster for that matter — goes much beyond scoring brownie points or nationalistic breast-beating. It is the key to saving precious lives and preventing damage to property and public assets. A comparison with the Super Cyclone that devastated the state in 1999 would put things in perspective. Even after accounting for the fact that it was a storm of much greater intensity, it is hard to explain away the loss of close to 10, 000 human lives, over five lakh cattle and lasting damage to public infrastructure in the affected areas that is said to have pushed the back by a decade. Indian weather forecasting obviously has come a long way since 1999 when the radars in place did not have the capacity to anticipate or record wind speeds of more than 250 km/hour (the wind speed of the Super Cyclone was later estimated to have been above 300 km/hr). One can bet that even a cyclonic storm of similar dimensions today would not cause a quarter of the damage that the Super Cyclone did 15 years ago. The proliferation of television media since then has certainly helped. But in the absence of accurate forecasting, the much greater reach of the media would not amount to much. With IMD’s forecast on Cyclone Hudhud having proved remarkably accurate, there is no reason to dispute the course or the intensity that it has predicted for the very severe cyclonic storm over the next 48 hours. It is already being borne out with ground reports about the extent of rainfall and the speed of the wind. The one thing that makes the crucial difference in such situations is time. Accurate tracking of a cyclonic storm from the moment it is formed in the deep sea gives both the people and the administration in the affected areas adequate time to prepare for the eventuality — as it happened twice in succession in the last one year. It gives governments the breathing space to requisition the required men and material and move them into position before a cyclone strikes. The Naveen Patnaik government may have usurped the bragging rights for its mammoth evacuation effort during Cyclone Phailin. But the IMD certainly deserved at least part of the credit for the minimal loss of lives and property last year. With the rapid increase in the access to the internet even in a poor state like Odisha, it is easy get confused with the plethora of forecasts and hard to decide on the right course of action. But the experience of the last two cyclones on the eastern coast of the country has shown that it pays to stick to our very own India Meteorological Department.