STH activities: Raising awareness on Disaster Risk among common people and our Stormwatch (Early Warning) Activities

 Responding to the above invite, I talked on disaster risk, changing rainfall patterns and how to convert a smart phone into an effective early warning device. The meeting was attended by 30 odd officials, staff and workers from the Sericulture Research Station and from an agricultural institute.

STH stormwatch activities
Though this activity is not featured in this blog as actively as earlier, STH has been more than active in social media mainly in our What's App group called HAZARD ALERTS (1 &2).
Placed below are some images of an earlier storm we tracked in the first week of March and another one which is still intensifying in the Bay and will eventually become a cyclone in another 3 days time.

 

Praful Rao
Kalimpong District
Darjeeling- Sikkim Himalayas

Amazing storm activity in the Bay of Bengal in Oct2020

 Although we had minimal rain thus far in Oct 2020, the Bay of Bengal saw a cauldron of activity with numerous storms forming and moving towards peninsular India giving record breaking rainfall in Hyderabad.

 

Earlier, we reported and tracked these storms regularly in this blog in a series called 'STH Stormwatch' but now since we use a WhatsApp group (Hazard Alerts) to disburse information on storms we have discontinued the series.
However, in the interest of recording some of these storms and tremendous activity that took place in the Bay of Bengal I am placing a collage of images and information on the subject most of which we used in 'Hazard Alerts'.
To a lay person like me, I was surprised to find that many of the weather systems in the Bay which affected us had there genesis in massive tropical storms which brewed up in the Pacific and swept across Indo-China. The remnants of these storms intensified in the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian sea.

 Weather chart of that time and satellite imagery of the activity in the Bay of Bengal is placed below:

 

Almost the same scenario was repeated around 20Oct except that the depression which formed off the coast of Odisha/Andhra Pradesh tracked NNE and gave heavy rain to the north eastern states and Bangladesh

 

As I write Typhoon 'SAUDEL' has formed in the South China Sea and will again move westwards and by the next week MAY form yet another low pressure in the Bay

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya