KATHMANDU, March 24: The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology has been releasing a bulletin of weather forecast every three days.
The bulletin includes forecasts of weather in the province-wise high-hill and mountainous areas of the country. But today's bulletin from the Department is something different.
A release has been issued calling for the public to take necessary precautions with the statement “The country's mountainous region will see partial to minor changes in weather in the coming 24 hours.
Westerly wind to trigger rising impact from tonight onward
Brief shower with thunderstruck is likely to take place in four places of Gandaki, Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces and in one-two areas of the mountainous region of the remaining provinces".
According to the Department, now the country has the influence of the local as well as westerly winds. The weather forecast bulletin issued by the Department only has weather forecast information for the coming three days. The information is helpful to know and predict the weather but not the details of possible weather impacts in different sectors.
Though the weather forecast system is somehow more effective than the past one, it has not worked well to mitigate the effects. The disaster trend of the last year can be taken as a reference to substantiate the proposition.
According to Deputy Director General of the Department, Archana Shrestha, the adoption of traditional measures for weather forecasting has not worked much to mitigate losses caused by erratic weather conditions.
Against this backdrop, the country is adopting a practice of impact-based weather forecasting not only to predict the weather-incurred incidents but also their effects, necessary precautionary measures to be adopted and a plan to mobilize agencies in different sectors.
The project will be piloted from this year. Shrestha said, "The program has been introduced to lessen the loss of weather-induced and water-induced disasters, protect human lives from natural calamities, make society aware of weather and reap benefits from good weather conditions.”
