IMD Opens Jammu Regional Meteorological Centre and Reassigns Northern Coverage

Overview

• The new Jammu Regional Meteorological Centre was inaugurated on Friday, June 5 and becomes the India Meteorological Department's seventh RMC, taking primary responsibility for weather services in Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.
• The IMD is decentralising its northern operations by splitting the previous Delhi remit into three centres — Jammu, Delhi and Lucknow — with a Lucknow RMC officially scheduled for inauguration on June 8 to serve Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
• Observation and radar coverage in the region has been substantially expanded since 2014, with national Doppler radar numbers rising from 17 to about 50, four local radars now at Jammu, Srinagar, Leh and Banihal Top, and five more proposed under Mission Mausam.
• Jammu RMC will issue mountain and high-altitude forecasts, district-level forecasts, tourist advisories and targeted warnings for flash floods, cloudbursts, avalanches, heavy snowfall, thunderstorms and landslides to help pilgrims, farmers, transport operators, hydropower projects, disaster managers and security forces.
• The department has modernised regional seismology with digital upgrades and an added observatory at Udhampur, proposed a Kishtwar station, and signed MoUs with local universities to expand research such as high-altitude cloud physics and improve local forecasting capacity.