Time and again, our Met Office fails to predict the rains.
A few days ago , a week ago on Monday, someone there made a prediction, that the monsoon, would set in on Wednesday. With thunder showers. So desperate is the disbelief in the Met office, that hundreds of people went to work, on Tuesday itself , armed with assorted rain gear. Tuesday afternoon saw the clouds mobilising for the great event, with rain winds wildly rustling through the trees, the earth gave off that particular fragrance it does when it gives up on summer finally, and Tuesday saw a proper rain in the evening, like a strong preamble. At this point the Met Office forecast thundershowers the next day. Almost everyone in Mumbai knew there would be rain , even without the official prediction.
And predictably, there was no thunder. Again.
Maybe time has now come for us to review our current weather prediction technology.
The Doppler radar , advertised as God's gift to Mumbai's Met Office, has arrived, 4 years after the July 2005 deluge, and since it takes 2-3 months to set up, will be useless this year.
I sometimes feel very disappointed with technology , particularly if it involves needles doing graphs, and humans taking casual looks at them between sips of tea, and postulations about El Nino,Global warming,Al Gore and other burning topics of the day..
So I have a very environment friendly, Green etc suggestion . There are certain techniques , used worldwide , for weather prediction. Implementing those will not involve importing machines that become obsolete, or terribly current machines getting hit by a falling flyover or tree or whatever.
In fact , what I suggest , will totally green the city.....
Compulsory planting of mangroves along the coast of Mumbai, leaving gaps for the harbour, beaches, and unavoidable points of natural entry into the sea. Banning of political meetings in green spaces earmarked for the citizens. Better upkeep and enhancement of the Mahim Nature Park, the only refuge of the remaining mangroves. And a wish that at some point, Nandan Nilekani is appointed as the "saviour" of Mumbai....
Upgradation of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park with facilities for housing a large variety of animals and birds, with sufficiently expertly trained manpower to manage and monitor the quality and maintenance of the park resources.
Just outside the perimeter of the park , a science park for students, with appropriate observation machines like telescopes and microscopes, as well as a huge vegetable growing section, managed by the tribal original residents of that park area.
Why ? To predict the weather, is the simple answer.
Children at the science park , learning to observe the spectrum around the sun and moon, can become experts in predicting rain. If the diameter of the visible spectrum around the sun is bigger than that around the moon, rain is likely in a couple of days. Don't know about thundershowers. The crops need water, not noise , no?
Sparrows twittering together in a dry sand bed, indicates impending rain in a day or so. However, if they are fooling around in a pool of water, it means dry days are approaching.
Look for eggs of the Lapwing bird (Titwi). This bird never builds nests, but lays eggs of bare soil. If the eggs are found on a higher elevation in the fields/park, it means good rains are around the corner. Eggs laid in the lower level parts of the field, imply a confidence that there will be no danger from any rain, and hence there may be a drought.
If you see Mynah birds (starlings) bathing in water, it mean rain is around the corner.
Sometimes, you can observe insects around the house .Like dragonflies/monsoon flies. If you observe them swarming around over dry areas, it means rain in imminent. However, if they are seen over pools of water, then get ready for dry weather.
The ordinary centipedes also contribute to the knowledge. An approaching rain makes them worry about eggs, and they scurry about in swarms carrying their eggs to safe places, to avoid rainwater damage.
The House swift bird ( Ababeel, Babeela ) is a small, smoky-black bird with white throat.This bird frequents old forts, deserted houses and ruined buildings. When it is observed flying really high in the sky , it means rains are expected.
Animals too, do their bit
Camels in the zoo part of the park may teach the kids something. Turns out that a swelling on the lower part of the camel's legs, indicates imminent rain. Scientifically, it has to do with the effects of atmospheric humidity on the camels legs. But think. The swelling could have been anywhere, and if it had been, say, on the head or hump, humans would not have noticed. So there is a divine plan in making us observe the leg swelling on the camel, for prediction of weather.....
And finally, for those who prefer to garden, do observe your grass, and tomato and french bean plants. The pesky spiders know more about rain than we do. If you see spiderwebs on tomato plants, french beans and assorted grasses, then rest assured that rain will not be happening any time soon. ....
Notwithstanding all these wonderful green signs that teach us weather prediction, we humans, since ages, have only performed invasive rituals to propitiate rain. Praying for rain is probably the only non-invasive method.
In Punjab, a feast (varisty Puja) is organised by villagers collectively during summers, in the event of a long dry spell . All cry for rain and the children sing a song. The essence of the song is that "when children cry, God listens".
In China, huge dragons which were part of religious festivals were torn up when rains failed. Europe, did not lag behind. In many European countries, failing rains triggered an uprooting of saintly statues which were then rooted upside down in soil. As a means of protesting a drought , Italians even chained statues and clipped their wings to show their anger.
When Cajoling a God was unsuccessful, we unimaginative humans target the neighbors.
(Actually, come to think of it, this happens so often in Mumbai, anyway. Verbal and non verbal abuse amongst the neighbors, whether in housing,trains,buses, or just huge crowds. Shouldn't be difficult to figure out the rain. Maybe that's why we get maximum rain and flooding when the garbage clogs the storm drains.)
In Bengal when the end of the drought was not in sight, desperate people threw filth on the homes of their neighbors who in turn abused them; this was considered auspicious (!) for rainfall.
In societies where women are treated second class, like in the Shahpur district of Pakistan, people would throw a pot of filth (ouch!), on the threshold of a notorious old shrew of the area during a drought. This, not surprisingly, resulted in a fluent stream of foul language, which supposedly accelerated the onset of rain. What happens if there is no notorious shrew ? Is a badmouthing mafia don OK as a target for throwing pots of filth ? Are there any limits to foul language ?
Very very interesting. This connection between foul language , abuse and rain. Almost like creating a "dirt" situation of a certain magnitude, and then pleading with the rains to come and complete a comprehensive clean heavy duty wash.
All the more reason for us to consider the Green prediction methods of those lower on the Darwinian scale. And all the more reason for us to teach our children to observe the signs for rain, in nature, rather than teach them the violent methods propagated by those who refuse to learn....
One way of classifying countries is the way they treat "weather".....
Till I left the shores of India in 1970 (for a few years), I had never realized that it could be a topic for conversation. I mean, it was fine in cases where rain flooded the entire first floor of your house, and someone else was talking about boating in their garden, but smiling and nodding at rank strangers and saying ,"Wonderful day, isn't it?", when nothing alarmingly exciting was happening, used to feel a bit pseudo, if you get what I mean.
And then I realized, that watching news on television and paying great attention to the weatherman/woman forecasting the next days situation, , was something folks took seriously. People cancelled weekend camping if rain was forecast. And, no surprise, it always rained when they said it would. People packed a few more warm clothes when temperatures were scheduled to dip in winter, and there was no chance that you would be suddenly sweating instead.
They took weather seriously. And so , it was discussed, not suffered.
Way back, when I was in middle school, weather was not such a hot topic. I mean you had seasons, which more or less stuck to their schedule, and weather forecasts in newspapers (there was no TV then), mainly consisted , of showing, a bunch of maximum and minimum temperatures here and there, mainly to fill up columns. There was great attention paid to "accurately" describing possible rainfall in terms like , "scattered rain likely in parts of south central Maharashtra"; which really said nothing you didn't know.
Then TV happened. And you always got the impression that the weather part of the news was there to fill in a few minutes, while the main anchor had a much needed drink of water. The weatherperson , always announced things in a way, that implied that he/she had some extra secret information , and they always showed us some INSAT-1B satellite pictures to create a high-tech impression. And never mind that it indicated the then current weather and nobody knew what would happen the next day......
Nothing has changed, except the dresses worn by the weather anchor.
So it was not surprising at all, that we were suddenly inundated yesterday, regarding news , about a cyclone hitting West Bengal, and Kolkatta, as the innocent populace there, went about their daily grind.
This has been the pattern of weather prediction.
A few days ago, there was a news report, about some bureaucratic scholarly meteorologist talking about a "depression" in the Bay of Bengal. While people concentrated on using big words, and getting their name spellings correct in newspapers, this Depression moved around, and possibly grew and spread. A Department of meteorology should have been able to give early warnings about possible havoc in relevant parts of the country. Cyclone movements are eminently traceable.
But , as it happens every year, the meteorological department has such a hang up, about predicting the onset of the Southwest Monsoon, and whether it will rain in Mumbai 10 days after it reaches Kerala (in the southern tip of the country), that folks in Kolkatta were caught totally unawares, by the sudden darkness at noon , followed by massive winds and rain. Flights were disrupted, trees were uprooted in the cities, causing serious destruction , human and non human, huge amount of flooding in other parts of West Bengal ravaged the countryside, leading to horrendous damage, and loss of life.
And amidst reports in the press of the ensuing havoc, a smug announcement from the weather-types, saying. "We can confirm that the the monsoon has set in, in Kerala". (So would thousands of citizens , who have learned by trialo and error to anticipate the monsoon)......
The government grant for Plan Budget outlays to IMD for the 8th, 9th and 10th Five Year Plans were Rupees 130 crores, Rupees 254 crores and Rupees 309 crores respectively. (This from an answer given in Parliament by the concerned minister). I crore Rs = 10,000,000 Rs = 210,228.04 USD at today's conversion rate.
A few questions.
Like in education, do we have our priorities wrong ? While , for some reason , we seem to be concentrating on being no 1 in ownership of cell phones in the world, and planning for bullet trains, someone needs to pay attention, to some kind of cost benefit analysis, regarding the functioning of the Meteorological department, and its interface with other administrative and operations related urban/rural set ups.
Disaster Action Committees set lofty aims, and are crammed with politicians. Mumbai has had several traumatic monsoon events, since 2005, but other than "meeting ", minuting and publicizing, no one has bothered to check if the plans are being adhered to, if deviations from it are being rectified, and whether the quality of the "completed" work stands up to strict scrutiny. And while some completely IT-disabled, politically-enabled folks acquire official laptops as part of the "handouts", no one bothers to show them how they can see the progress of the cyclone on a map on the Internet.
So while the IMD kept mum about a developing heavy rain cloud cover of 15 miles height, till it discharged itself horrendously over Mumbai on 26th July 2005, four years down the line, the big excitement is about when the rains will hit Mumbai.
The various city agencies have suitably incomplete road projects, all dug up, to ensure maximum flooding. They are also pointing guilty fingers at other municipal agencies, and someone has caught on to the fact that the tide is going to be the highest it has been in the last hundred years , on July 24, 2009. There is a planned effort to psyche people into staying home on that day. Pregnant ladies scheduled to deliver around that date are in tension about going in to hospital 4 days earlier. The authorities are recommending that schools declare holidays (on their own initiative), and the populace is being asked not to venture out unnecessarily. (No one who travels by public transport in the monsoon thinks it is a picnic. They go because, for many, their day's earning, and their family's food, depends on it )
In a world where cyclones are sedately named after women, the IMD even got that wrong.
The Kolkatta cyclone was named "Aila".....
While to western ears this may sound like a sweet feminine name, in my language, Marathi, which is widely spoken in Mumbai, it is an expletive, and had I uttered it in my family in my childhood or even later, a few palms would have made strong contact with my face, besides branding me uncouth.
Maybe its time we went back to natural methods of weather prediction, that farmers know. Like bird calls, appearances of certain insects, direction of the wind, appearances of certain clouds, behaviour of animals.....
Or maybe, we can outsource this to the US ? Mr Obama, are you listening?
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
So said Rabindranath Tagore.
So far as the meteorological services in India are concerned, that would have been just fine. Clouds could come floating and go, occasionally drip some rain here and there, there would be a poem written about sunsets, and the meteorological types would be back to wrongly predicting light showers over Madhya Maharashtra,Telangana and other exciting places.
I watch the news daily at night. Between being thrilled to bits about temperatures in Patna hitting 2 degrees below normal (Yipee), and a western low pressure disturbance threatening to come in, (along with many other dangerous things) from Pakistan , the fun part begins when the western disturbance, simply drops its disturbing style and simply remains western the next day. Thankfully, the North, South, East and West do not change .
Last evening , while hurrying through the bhaji market at dusk, there was a different feel to the air. The covers put up by the bhajiwalaas to protect their veggies from excessive sun and possible rain, were actually flapping around. There was a lot of dust suspended in the air. Everyone was hurrying around. The last few days had been incredibly hot and humid. Post sunset, things got a bit cooler, something unusual for Mumbai. Opening my balcony after entering an empty house, I suddenly saw some lightening. First just a lighting up of the southern sky near the horizon. Almost as a reflex action, I took in a deep breath, seeking the smell of wet mud, which was not yet there. Streaks of lightening then started appearing more frequently. There was a massive wind that simply rolled in through the balcony, pushing the doors in, and scattering all kinds of papers, greeting cards and other knick knack which had been sedately sitting around all these months. A windy rain followed , with a great intensity, did its stuff for about five to ten minutes, and then , breezed off towards the ocean, leaving behind the wonderful smell of wet mud after the first rains .
Wonderful as this sounds, it would have been still more wonderful, if our esteemed meteorological pundits had predicted its possibility. A lot of mango "chhundaas ", slowly getting solar-cooked in the heavy heat on terraces, would have been saved . Housewives at the fag end of their summer stocking of papads and other storage items, would have taken different decisions had they known. What a waste !
Why is it that the meteorological services in India, explain the event after it happens? Why doesn't some one appear on TV and say "folks, if you are planning on open-air celebratory gettogethers, there is a definite chance of some rain in the evening. So take care of things".
I know countries where they predict not only rain, but how much will fall. If it is snow, they tell you which areas to avoid, due to dangers of heavy snow. A whole generation of automobile-enabled weekend-obsessed citizens, plan their outings accordingly.
What technology do they use that we cannot get? Is it that we have the technology but are not trained to interpret the findings ? If we do not have the technology, why do we not acquire it ? Is there a priority list for stuff to be bought by the government ? In all the amount of people that go abroad to learn about Hindi usage in Sweden, thief catching procedures in New York, solar energy usage by hotels in Australia, how rain is tackled in London, and laundering of a different kind in Luxembourg or Switzerland, can we not find funds for a few smart types who can learn the techniques and come back and train others here ? If not humanware and software, then do we lack the hardware ? In our great journey from things nano to things mega, are we forgetting day-today life ?
Why are most of our weather reports dedicated to telling you what the temperatures were yesterday?
Lest these questions fall on deaf ears, think of the just finished IPL. Think of the sudden rains, and the unready manpower that struggled to run with the pitch covers. Think of matches that ended differently due to the machinations of Duckworth and Lewis. Think of the points table which would have said 2-0 instead of 1-1.
We have so much know-how in so many fields; it is high time we developed the know-when.
In the meanwhile, some high authority of the meteorological type, giving avid news people , what is considered a authoritative scholarly news bite, says : "This is just a precursor to the monsoons, which should be setting in by next week. These rains came because of the excessive heat situation in the last few days/weeks/etc."
Thank you indeed.
I don't know about you, but my household help, Kusum, who is by definition , illiterate, told me exactly the same thing .
So did my daughter, who controlled herself from dashing to the terrace and getting wet, saying, this rain brought down the main dirt from the air above Mumbai ; the next rain, in a week, would be the one to get wet in and enjoy.
Why do we persist with the meteorologists ?
Maybe they are avid followers of the American Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), who is supposed to have made , what he thought, was an important statement, when he said, "“The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” ........(I resist the temptation to ask "Aur kuch?).....
And to hell with predictions of the useful kind.
Sparrows twittering together in a dry sand bed, indicates impending rain in a day or so. However, if they are fooling around in a pool of water, it means dry days are approaching. 
Look for eggs of the Lapwing bird (Titwi). This bird never builds nests, but lays eggs of bare soil. If the eggs are found on a higher elevation in the fields/park, it means good rains are around the corner. Eggs laid in the lower level parts of the field, imply a confidence that there will be no danger from any rain, and hence there may be a drought.
If you see Mynah birds (starlings) bathing in water, it mean rain is around the corner. 
The ordinary centipedes also contribute to the knowledge. An approaching rain makes them worry about eggs, and they scurry about in swarms carrying their eggs to safe places, to avoid rainwater damage. 
The House swift bird ( Ababeel, Babeela ) is a small, smoky-black bird with white throat.This bird frequents old forts, deserted houses and ruined buildings. When it is observed flying really high in the sky , it means rains are expected. 
Camels in the zoo part of the park may teach the kids something. Turns out that a swelling on the lower part of the camel's legs, indicates imminent rain. Scientifically, it has to do with the effects of atmospheric humidity on the camels legs. But think. The swelling could have been anywhere, and if it had been, say, on the head or hump, humans would not have noticed. So there is a divine plan in making us observe the leg swelling on the camel, for prediction of weather.....
And finally, for those who prefer to garden, do observe your grass, and tomato and french bean plants. The pesky spiders know more about rain than we do. If you see spiderwebs on tomato plants, french beans and assorted grasses, then rest assured that rain will not be happening any time soon. .... 
