BHUBANESWAR: Very few people get the kind of media attention that Sarat Chandra Sahu received on the last day of his career on Thursday. Then, not many affect people’s lives the way Sahu, who retired as Director of India Meteorological Department (IMD), Odisha, has. A Grade-F scientist with the IMD, Sahu was the longest serving Director at IMD’s Regional Meteorological Science Centre in Bhubaneswar. But that is a different story.
It was during his 14-year stint that the State witnessed the biggest transformation in terms of weather forecasting and meteorological technology infrastructure. Once known to be far removed from the public, the much-maligned IMD became most reliable in Odisha.In the last two decades, the State reported two super-cyclones - the 1999 Super Cyclone and the Phailin in 2013. The Hudhud, which hit the East Coast next year, spared the State but only narrowly.
After the Super Cyclone, the Odisha Government firmed up a Disaster Management Policy, first State in the country to do so. It was after that the Centre took note of the immense challenge that the country was facing in terms of accurate weather forecasting.When IMD was re-working its forecast modelling and infrastructure, Sahu took over as Director of Odisha in 2004. From weather reports being collected over phone, today it dishes out nowcasts for thundershowers and squalls at least four hours a day through e-mail, social media and news channels.
His biggest moment was, however, when Phailin was predicted to hit the State in 2014. Working round the clock, Sahu and his team had produced forecast bulletins almost every hour as IMD worked up a fierce pace. The national forecaster beat the international met agencies in predicting the accurate landfall timing and spot which helped the Odisha Government mount one of the biggest evacuation exercises and a zero-casualty mission successfully. Eventually, the State received international acclaim for disaster management.
Statistically speaking, Odisha today has 37 automatic weather stations, 177 automatic rain gauge systems, two Doppler radars installed at Paradip and Gopalpur and another two under construction at Sambalpur and Balasore.
At Runway 14 of the Biju Patnaik International Airport, the CSIR-Indian Aerospace Laboratories developed Dhristi has been installed to measure visibility at the runs. The Aviation Weather Observation System too has been put in place at the airport.
That apart, four more new airports at Rourkela, Jharsuguda, Utkela and Jeypore developed under Udaan scheme of the Centre, similar systems would be installed, much thanks to the down-to-earth Sahu and his team.