Bhubaneswar: Aiming to get proper and correct data on weather, the Odisha Revenue and Disaster Management Department, in coordination with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has installed manual surface observatories in all 30 districts.
The manual observatories have been installed at district headquarters across the state. Eight new manual observatories at Dhenkanal, Deogarh, Bargarh, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Nuapada, Khurda and Nabarangpur have been set up in April, officials said Thursday.
Earlier, seven observatories were installed at Nayagarh, Boudh, Chhatrapur, Paralakhemundi, Rayagada, Bhadrak and Jajpur during the year 2020-21.
With the addition of the eight new observatories, Odisha has now a total of 38 manual observatories covering all 30 districts.
Out of these, 10 are fully operated by IMD while the remaining 28 are being operationalised in coordination with the Odisha government.
In addition to the observatories, the IMD has two Doppler Weather Radar stations at Paradip and Gopalpur and six High Wind Speed Recorders (HWSRs) at Gopalpur, Puri, Bhubaneswar, Paradip, Chandbali and Balasore.
The network of observatories will give a boost for weather information as well as weather forecasting for the entire state, the officials stated. Odisha being a state which has to face the wrath of cyclones quite frequently, these surface observatories will come in very handy.