Bhubaneswar, Sept. 1: A technical glitch in the state's lone Doppler radar in Paradip has forced the regional Met centre here to depend on other centres and satellite images to forecast daily weather.

A source at the Paradip radar station said the Doppler weather radar has been lying defunct since August 7.

Sarat Chandra Sahu, director of the Bhubaneswar regional meteorological centre, told the Telegraph that he had informed higher authorities in Delhi about the problem. 'A technical team is likely to arrive shortly,' he said.

Sahu said the technical glitch had forced them to forecast weather using various models and data from radars in neighbouring states.

'The Doppler radar is one of the major tools for weather forecast. However, there are alternatives like models and satellite pictures,' Sahu said.

'We have to depend on the India Meteorological Department stations in Calcutta and Vishakhapatnam. Besides ,we are also relying on satellite images to forecast the weather,' he said. The data and pictures from Calcutta help in the forecasting the weather for northern districts such as Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar, while data from Vishakhapatnam is used to forecast weather in southern districts such as Koraput and Malkangiri.

Doppler radars are equipped to monitor weather conditions up to an aerial range of 500km. They are also capable of cyclone forecasts within an aerial range of 250km. With the commissioning of the state-of-the-art Doppler radar in Paradip on November 21, 2015, weather forecast mechanism was upgraded in Odisha. A Met official said the Doppler radar was generating perfect weather data about cyclones, storms, excessive rainfall, thunderstorms, hailstorm and cloudbursts.

Doppler radars will also be set up in Gopalpur, Sambalpur and Balasore. The Gopalpur radar is expected to be commissioned shortly after completion of construction and installation. The radar station will be operational after a final inspection by an expert team from the Indian Space Research Organisation and Bharat Electronics Limited.

Last week, the state government urged the Centre to expedite the installation of radars in Balasore and Sambalpur. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik wrote to Union minister for science and technology Harsh Vardhan on August 28 seeking his personal intervention.