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Bhubaneswar: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is all set to launch country’s 17th and state’s first Doppler radar station at Paradip Saturday.
Additional principal secretary to the Prime Minister PK Mishra will inaugurate the station at Paradip at 11:30am Saturday in the presence of IMD director general LS Rathore and Chief Secretary Gokul Chandra Pati.
“The radar station has long been awaited and is coming to a reality. The station will definitely prove a boon for Orissa keeping in view the wrath of cyclonic storms being borne by the state. The radar will help extensively in weather prediction in a real time manner,” said Met director Sarat Sahu.
Notably, IMD has installed Doppler radars at Agartala, Bhopal, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Machilipatnam, Mohanbari in Dibrugarh, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patiala, Patna, Srinagar and Visakhapatnam. The Pradip Doppler radar station will be 17th in the country.
“Earlier, we used to depend on the Doppler radars at Visakhapatnam and Kolkata for the prediction of low pressures, depression or even cyclones. Now we will be able to predict any kind of disturbance over the Bay of Bengal within a radius of 500 km,” said Sahu.
Meanwhile, the IMD is also preparing to expedite the work on another radar station at Gopalpur and two more at Sambalpur and Balasore. The work for installation of Doppler radar at Gopalpur is on verge of completion while that of the other two is in initial stage.
