Amateurs take weather forecasting by storm

Work never ends for Sai Praneeth Burra. During the day, the 25-year-old, a Bengaluru-based techie, diligently writes code for a software firm. But once it ends, another 'work' begins, at home.

Burra morphs into a weather blogger, poring over data to make predictions for his home state, Andhra Pradesh.

This is Burra's other life; something he is proud of. And why not? His Facebook page is followed by over 88,000 people from urban and rural regions; and PM Narendra Modi mentioned him in his ‘Mann ki Baat’.

Burra is among the hundreds of independent weather blogs and social media pages that have cropped up in the past decade, proving increasingly useful for farmers and urban commuters who were hitherto dependent on the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

For farmers, the simple and timely communication of their locality’s predicted weather has saved many a harvest.

“Last year, due to my weekly forecast, a few farmers harvested their crops earlier than planned, saving them from the heavy rainfall. They were so happy they felicitated me,” says Burra.

And for urban commuters, forecasts involving rain help them plan their daily activities.

“I used to follow Google weather, but the local blogs provide more frequent updates for different areas within the city, which is helpful during monsoon,” says Naveen Kumar, a software engineer from Chennai, who follows a few of these blogs.

The simplicity of the language used and straightforward predictions make these forecasts easy to understand, he adds.

When a weather event occurs, comments begin to pour in on the weatherman’s page, with updates and requests for more information. Followers provide their own updates and help corroborate Burra's predictions.

Burra uses data from many platforms, analyses the patterns and generalises the information based on past patterns too, to formulate an update.

Most weather bloggers are self-taught.

Take for example, Srikanth K, a marketing professional who has been running the Chennaiyil Oru Malaikalam (COMK) blog for the past nine years.

“I would not call myself a weatherman, but a weather enthusiast,” he says. He cites this difference in terminology as he has not officially been trained in scientific weather forecasting.

Srikanth analyses open-source weather data based on similar past events and patterns. “I try to give some specifics and make use of visual cues like a map to show how rainfall could occur,” he says.

His forecasts cover entire Tamil Nadu.

“It makes sense to focus on a smaller area, as you need to observe a lot of factors. To track Chennai rains, you also have to track weather events in the Southwest, near the Western Ghats and coastal Karnataka,” he explains.

Specialised predictions

Weathermen in other regions of the country take a different approach.

Biswajit Sahu, the ‘Odisha Weatherman’ for instance, focuses more on cyclone and storm tracking. “I have been studying the state’s cyclones since 2013. Gradually, I began sharing my predictions through videos,” he says. It was in 2021, when Sahu accurately predicted a cyclone’s recourse, that people began to regularly follow and request updates.

The consensus among independent weather bloggers is clear — they do not see their forecasts as competing with the IMD. Instead, it is only a more localised and easily worded prediction.

“The independent blogs give us micro-level data, which is good. It helps us understand variations between areas within the city. It also gives us hints and clues about what we can further research,” says A Prasad, who heads the IMD in Bengaluru.

However, considering the amateur background of most weather bloggers, one must be wary of getting too invested in a single weatherman’s predictions, he warns.