REGIONAL METEOROLOGICAL CENTRE, CHENNAI

It's late in the evening and the television news bulletin is coming to an end.  It's now time for the weather capsule and you see a petite lady spouting forth the maximum and the minimum temperatures of various cities and the likely weather tomorrow.  Have you ever wondered how or where these news channels get all this data?  Well, if you are doing now, don't bother I have the answer for you.  The news channels gets these details from the Regional Meteorological Centre, Nungambakkam everyday.

The RMC is situated in a shady expanse on the busy College Road, near two famous educational institutions - the Good Shepherd School and the Women's Christian College.  It came into being on the 1st of April 1945 and was established to supervise and co-ordinate meteorological services in the Southern Region.  The Southern Region comprises the states of Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Pondicherry and Lakshadweep.  There are five other Regional Meteorological Centres (RMCs) in the country for other regions at Calcutta, Guwahati, Mumbai, Nagpur, and New Delhi. These six RMC's including the one at Chennai were created for administrative convenience and technical control. 

RMC Chennai has under its purview, the meteorological centres at Hyderabad, Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram, which function under its technical and administrative control.  These three meteorological centres provide meteorological services to their states.

Revikumar an Assistant Meteorologist, who is in charge of interacting with the Media, highlighted some important functions of the Regional Meteorological Centre and answered some of our queries. 

The non-aviation forecasting work, which gets regularly featured in newspaper and television weather reports is supervised and co-ordinated by the Area Cyclone Warning Centre (ACWC) at RMC, Chennai. The aviation weather forecasting activities, which are required by airport authorities, pilots etc, are controlled and co-ordinated by the Meteorological Office at Meenambakkam, Chennai Airport.  The Cyclone warnings which we receive whenever there is an imminent cyclone come from the ACWC's at Chennai and Vishakhapatnam.  The Cyclone Detection Radars located at Chennai, Machilipatnam, Vishakhapatnam, Karaikal and Kochi track Tropical Cyclones over the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. 

RMC Chennai also houses the Cyclone Warning Dissemination System (CWDS) unit from where the cyclone warning bulletins are disseminated to remote centres in coastal districts.  The accuracy of meteorological observations is ensured by periodical inspections of observatories by the Regional Meteorological Centre and other Meteorological Centres. Calibration of all instruments at observatories are checked at least once in two years.

The RMC Chennai maintains an astounding number of 121 surface observatories of which 53 are departmental observatories and 68 are part-time observatories, 13 pilot balloon observatories, 10 Rawin stations and 1 Radiosonde station.  There are also Port Meteorological offices at Chennai, Kochi and Visakhapatnam, which interact with masters of ships and shipping companies and other marine interests.

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