Odisha seeks Regional Met centre in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Monday urged the IMD to upgrade its existing office in Bhubaneswar to a Regional Meteorological centre as the State has been facing several natu-ral calamities such as cyclones and floods. State Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suresh Pujari placed the demand at a function on the occasion of the India Meteorological De-partment’s 150 years of service.

At present the IMD has six regional centres in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Nagpur, Kolkata and Guwahati. Stating that weather forecast is very important to manage any disaster, Pujari said Odisha would not have been able to manage the recent cyclone ‘Dana’ successfully unless IMD had provided weather updates in time. “IMD is the only source of India’s meteorological services and plays an important role in ensuring public safety, supporting economic growth and advancing scientific research,” Pujari said. He also said, “Odisha has become a permanent ad-dress for different types of disasters. Therefore, we urge the Director General of the IMD to set up a regional office of the weather department here,” the minister said.

Odisha’s Deputy Chief Minister K V Singh Deo said the IMD now makes accurate predictions on adverse weather conditions, including cyclones. “The IMD scientists are capable of pinpoint-ing the landfall of cyclones, the eye of a storm, possible impact and others. We have realised these during the recent cyclone ‘Dana’ which made landfall on the Odisha coast,” Singh Deo said.

Based on the forecast of the IMD, the State government sent ministers to districts for prepara-tion before the arrival of the cyclone. “The State government stands tall with the IMD to protect the people of Odisha”, he said.

Odisha’s Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) D K Singh said making weather forecasts for Od-isha are not an easy task. “The weather scientists of IMD have done a good job during the re-cent cyclone and they provided all required information to the State government,” he said.

IMD DG Mrutyunjaya Mohapatra, who hails from Odisha, said the government of Odisha has become a model across the world in disaster management. Incidents of lightning have emerged as the biggest disaster as more people are dying due to this as compared to other natural ca-lamities, he said. Around 300 people die in Odisha each year due to llightning and thunder-storms.

Similarly, the temperature dropped very low in places like Daringbadi in Kandhamal district, while several other districts like Bolangir and Mayurbhanj face high temperatures during sum-mer, Mohapatra pointed out. The IMD has weather monitoring stations in all 30 districts of Od-isha and Doppler radars at Paradip and Gopalpur, while three more places - Balasore, Sam-balpur and Bhubaneswar - will get the facility soon, the official said.

Manorama Mohanty, head of the meteorological centre, Bhubaneswar, said the IMD has wit-nessed remarkable growth and transformation over the last 150 years with sophisticated scien-tific recognition and a vast network of observations for advance forecast. “The advent of tech-nology brought about a revolution in meteorology for advancing its forecast capabilities,” she pointed out.