Maharashtra to launch weather advisory system for farmers

The Maharashtra government is all set to introduce a system to issue daily district-wise weather advisory to farmers across the state.
"The system has a capacity to generate weather alerts for every ten minutes, if required. The state is taking a step forward to explore the possibility of issuing weather advisory for farmers to minimise their crop losses due to adverse weather conditions," Agriculture Commissioner Sachindra Pratap Singh told PTI.
"Going by our current preparations and capacity to handle the data, I think we can introduce a weather advisory system," the commissioner said.
"The government is likely to announce it next week," Singh said.

The agriculture commissionerate conceived the proposal a few years back and it has completed setting up of weather stations at 2,050 sites across Maharashtra, he said.
"The weather stations have started data collection work and its uploading on central server of the state government," Singh said.

The first automatic weather station (AWS) in Maharashtra became operational on May 1 last year. The weather station helps in measuring the wind direction, wind speed, air temperature, relative humidity and records amount of rainfall, the officer said.
The Union and state governments get their weather alerts and inputs from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), which generally give a broad picture of regions covering several districts, he said.

The state government is now keen on providing more accurate information, which will ultimately benefit farmers in saving their crops or rescheduling sowing plans, Singh said.