Land allotted for new weather stations at Jakhu

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By: ML Verma

Keylong (July 8): Himachal Pradesh government has at last completed the process of land allotment for a new weather centre at Jakhu hill in Shimla where a radar system is proposed to be installed by the Indian Meteorological department in order to provide early warning of any natural calamity in the state. The state government has earmarked a piece of 2 acre of land for this purpose.

This was disclosed by Himachal meteorological department in-charge Dr Manmohan Singh during three-day Bharat Nirman Public Information Campaign, which concluded here today. The setting up of a new weather centre at Jakhu will enable the meterological department to give more updated and detailed weather forcasts in future. He said that the state did not had its own Met office satellite stations, but now it would be in a position to forecast early warning of any natural calamity like cloudburst, storm and flash flood, etc, after the installation of high powered Doppler weather radar. The radar would have the potential to monitor and forecast weather conditions every six hours with precise area specifications.

There are 70 weather observatories located in different parts of the state from where the Met office in Shimla is receiving daily reports. Of these, there are 23 automatic weather observatories and 27 automatic rain gauge centre.
Meteorological department’s upper air observation pilot balloon station is working at Sundernagar to record wind speed and its directions. The observatory balloon is lifted from the base up to 10 km.

Singh said that the first forecasting unit was set up in the state on January 2003, which was latter upgraded to compile computerized data and graphic units disseminating daily weather report to various stakeholders like disaster cell, revenue, agriculture, irrigation, railways, transport and tourism departments.

The headquarters of national meteorological department was set up at Shimla in 1905 after being shifted from Kolkata by the Britishers. Later it was shifted to Pune and then to New Dehli.

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