The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Wednesday said an X-band radar will be installed in Kerala's Wayanad district, where over 400 people were killed in a devastating landslide in July of last year.The IMD signed an MoU to install an X-band radar at the Pazhassiraja College, Pulpally, Wayanad, in the presence of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan."The X-band radar, with a range of 100 km, is a critical addition to the weather observation infrastructure in the disaster-prone Western Ghats region," the IMD said in a post on X."This state-of-the-art system will greatly enhance weather forecasting accuracy, enabling more timely and precise alerts for severe weather events. It is expected to play a pivotal role in strengthening disaster preparedness and response efforts in the region," the post further said.The Kerala government had earlier claimed that the IMD failed to predict the extreme rainfall that triggered the landslides in Wayanad on July 30 last year.In August last year, a global team of scientists said that the deadly landslides in Wayanad were triggered by an intense burst of rainfall, made 10 per cent heavier by climate change.The team, consisting of 24 researchers from India, Sweden, the US and the UK, said that over 140 mm of rainfall fell in a single day on soils already saturated by two months of monsoon precipitation, triggering catastrophic landslides and floods.Other researchers also linked the Wayanad landslides to a combination of factors, including forest cover loss, mining in fragile terrain and prolonged monsoon rains followed by heavy precipitation.What ISRO data saysAccording to the landslide atlas released by ISRO's National Remote Sensing Centre last year, 10 out of the top 30 landslide-prone districts in India are in Kerala, with Wayanad ranked at the 13th spot.Kerala govt blamed IMDThe Kerala government had earlier claimed that the IMD failed to predict the extreme rainfall that triggered the landslides in Wayanad on July 30 last year.
