Never has a potentially serious weather event fizzled out so quickly or completely! One moment we were being inundated by biblically heavy rain, the next, the rain stopped as though a tap had been turned off. A strange calm descended which, we were assured, meant that we were in the eye of the storm and the rain and wind would return with even greater force during the late evening. In fact, that was the end of the ‘cyclone’, the calm dry weather persisted through the night and this morning, although the mountains are shrouded in cloud the sun is shining and the puddles are steaming and will doubtless soon be dry.
Getting hold of a weather forecast here is difficult, the daily forecasts on the telly are hopeless, seeming to bear no resemblance to reality and the ones in the Times of India border on farcical, in particular I find the amazing accuracy that is always so confidently asserted very amusing with statements like ‘Temperature today at midday 31.27 C’ or ‘Rainfall 14.65 mm’. This coupled with the fact that for a given forecast the actual temperature was in fact nearer 26 and the rainfall absent does rather sap the confidence. Indeed the weather forecast in the paper this morning or yesterday made no mention of a cyclone. Of course, half of the reason for this is that there is relatively little need for a big spend on meteorology when for 99% of the time the weather is just so damn predictable, with rain for three months and hot sunshine for nine months.
Following the massive loss of life in the storm of July ’07 here, there were calls for increased spending on modern kit and a Doppler radar was purchased at considerable expense by the local government. People were therefore shocked and horrified a few months later to be told by the media that Doppler radar could not predict the weather but only tell what was happening in the present. Earlier, its acquisition had been accompanied by claims in the Times that now Mumbai would be able to give accurate weather forecasts days or even weeks ahead. I read recently that this facility has never been successfully commissioned and is currently rusting in a government compound whilst various departments argue about who is to blame for this huge waste of money. The thing is, it is impossible to tell if this whole story is true, partially true or even a complete bunch of crap!
So, looking on the TV, the newspapers, the net, or listening to the various self appointed weather pundits in the office, this coming weekend will be hot/cold, wet and dry making it a tad difficult to plan….
Latest update at 1.30pm: Weather fine , settled and sunny, still cloudy around the mountain peaks and the amount of water in the ground combining with the hot sunshine makes it highly probable that we may experience convectional storms this evening.
who/what DEP?
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