Weather News : Nowcast Services to Farmers through MKisan Portal

Nowcasting in India has benefited from major developments in observational meteorology and computer-based interactive data processing and display systems in IMD.

Considering the importance and reliability of DWR based information for nowcast of thunderstorm and associated weather, in the first phase, major stations/cities which come under the coverage of DWR are included for nowcasting of convective weather.

A total of 150 stations within 200 Km radius of various Doppler Weather Radars are selected and nowcast is uploaded every 3 hourly interval utilising Synoptic Data, Model outputs, Satellite products and finally various Radar outputs.

Therefore automatic dissemination of warnings for disastrous weather events like severe thunderstorms, hail, squalls etc. to registered farmers in M-Kisan Portal of Ministry of Agriculture through SMS alerts was launched for providing localised Extreme Weather Warnings.

These Nowcast alerts are based on Doppler data and very useful to alert the farmer community about the occurrence of the adverse weather.