Even as Jharkhand is waiting for monsoon showers, apathy with regard to infrastructure has been raining incessantly with no sight of an end to the biggest bottleneck in clear predictions and report compilation to suggest the accurate picture of weather pattern in Jharkhand. The infrastructure woes currently being faced include problems of human resource and equipment to aid weather monitoring.
lagging behind on making predictions at short notice due to absence of Doppler Weather Radar, the Indian Meteorological Department is facing another problem — rainfall report from blocks on two counts — first, vacant position of Block Statistics Officer (BSO) and second, defunct ‘rain gauge’ which is used to collect rainfall details in the each block.
“It was decided in a meeting with the Disaster Management department that we will get a rainfall reading directly from all stations across Jharkhand. But, around 50 centres of 250 send us report and we collect some data on our own from observatories. Still around half of the centres don’t send us report,” said Forecast Officer at Indian Meteorological Department at Ranchi, U Shrivastava.
Due to small infrastructure woes the IMD picks data in bits and pieces from Directorate of Statistics and other sources to prepare a complete and accurate report of rainfall in Jharkhand.
The IMD and Disaster Management department (DMD) had agreed to discharge their interwoven responsibilities for effective weather reporting post which the DMD had asked all blocks to send rainfall report directly to IMD’s office at Ranchi by 11 am through email. The report sent from blocks is compiled by the regional office of the IMD and a comprehensive report is finally sent to the head office at Delhi. The exercise is done on each day to facilitate report generation for Jharkhand.
“It was agreed but it could not be done because there is no rain. Besides we have directed the request to Director Statistics to change faulty rain gauge in blocks. So far it has not been done,” said Under Secretary, DMD, Gopal Singh.
All efforts have come to naught because of a massive vacancy of BSOs and no clarity over the fate of small instruments to trap rainfall readings in blocks. The devices are purchased from a Pune based company and cost around Rs3850 per unit however the total installation costs is around Rs14,027 per unit. As of now we will order around 30 rain gauge out of which 15 will be installed
“We are waiting for funds and any order can be placed only after that. So, replacement cannot happen until then. Even, our report collection has become difficult because we are short of around 173 BSOs across Jharkhand,” said an official of Directorate of Statistics.
Absence of adequate number of observatories also makes task of weathermen difficult as they have to rely on three observatories (Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Daltonganj) despite a provision of an observatory in each district which has to be set up with the help of State Government.
Meanwhile, the IMD has predicted that a brief respite from heatwaves is a possibility after June 13 with chances of thundershowers due to local conditions. The pre-monsoon activity would take place just before the onset of monsoon which is expected to arrive after June 18.