SURKHET:- The Meteorological Monitoring Centres have been set up at 46 local levels of Karnali Province. There are 89 local governments in the province.
Chief of the Hydrology and Meteorology Office in Surkhet, Dr Indira Kandel, said, “There are 71 Meteorological Monitoring Centres in operation in Karnali. The province has also run 31 hydro measurement centres. However, there is a lack of workforce to monitor two of these facilities.”
According to Dr Kandel the weather radar centres at Guranse, located on the border of Dailekh and Surkhet districts, has been closed for two years due to lightning damage.
These radars were set up in a bid to provide information about the weather condition of Karnali, Lumbini and Sudurpaschim Provinces. Although the equipment to install the radars were purchased from abroad, there was still the problem of skilled human resource to fix these devices in Nepal. Office is planning to install the devices next year, according to her.
She further said it is difficult to accurately evaluate the local weather condition in absence of meteorological monitoring stations. “Without such facilities at local levels, actual data on rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions are in short supply,” she said, adding, “It directly hampers forecasting and timely early warning of floods, landslides, heavy rains and other natural calamities.”
Karnali Province government has, however, stated that it had accorded priority to the expansion of meteorological infrastructures. Chief Secretary at the Province government, Birendra Kumar Yadav, said they were ready to extend supports to the local governments to purchase necessary equipment for measuring weather conditions so that weather prediction would be accurate and help minimize loss and damages.