IMD Bhubaneswar centre director SC Sahu at work. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 17: The meteorological centre in the city, under the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), has graduated from its analog weather prediction system to the digital model.

The upgrade requires mathematical modelling involving high-end computing with data received from other places and observatories across the state.

The accuracy of the digital prediction by the local meteorological centre was tested during cyclone Phailin, which made landfall through the Ganjam coast on the night of October 12 last year. The IMD prediction of the cyclone wind speed was 220kmph was almost accurate with the storm hitting the coast at 210kmph.

The local weather office hit the bull’s eye once again when it predicted incessant rain in and around Ganjam district between October 23 and 26, which caused serious floods in southern Odisha.

“We had predicted extreme rainfall which turned out to be true with an average rainfall of 160mm taking place. Our prediction helped the administration,” said director of the IMD local centre Sarat Chandra Sahu.

However, Sahu said that the cyclone prediction was co-ordinated by the cyclone warning division (CWD) of the IMD’s headquarters in New Delhi, which, incidentally, is headed by Odia meteorologist Mrutyunjay Mohapatra.

The Bhubaneswar centre monitors 21 observatories, 37 automatic weather stations, 177 automatic rain gauge stations, 149 rain gauge stations under different schemes, four pilot balloon observatories and 13 cyclone disaster mitigation committee stations across the state.

The coordinated resultant of the local meteorological centre and the state government worked so well that when Phailin-hit Ganjam, there were no casualties due to the swift evacuation of people from vulnerable locations. The zero casualty success from a major disaster like cyclone also got the notice of the United Nations, which will replicate this model in other nations in the world.

After its inception as a meteorological centre on July 1, 1948, it was upgraded to a cyclone-warning centre (CWC) in 1973, following the area’s devastation by a severe cyclone in 1971. The high power computing system (HPCS) started working at the centre in November, 2009 and the Synergie system manufactured by Mete France International (MFI) came here in 2010 to help make quick predictions after analysing weather charts.

Mohapatra said both the HPCS and Synergie are super computers as they can take up computational tasks of very high order.

The local IMD centre has also installed a GPS-enabled hydrogen filled balloon since July 2012 to get the upper-air data of up to 30km from the ground.