IMD's website report jump in traffic due to erratic monsoon, weather forecast apps gain too

NEW DELHI: Guess who’s reaped a bumper harvest after eight weeks of erratic monsoon rain? It is the website of the weather office, besides smartphone apps of private forecasters.
Drying crops in farms, searing heat along with power cuts in cities and the financial markets’ hunger for clues about food inflation and rural incomes have driven droves of people to the website of the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Traffic to the website jumped 80% in June when the monsoon was among the worst in a century, which no forecaster, official or private, had predicted. Private forecasters such as Kolkata-based Weather Express and Noida-based Skymet are also seeing a rush for their products.

Weather Express, which focuses on phone applications that update users on the weather forecast, expects its customer base to expand 30% this year. Government-run IMD, which towers above its fledgling competitors in terms of a countrywide network of weather gauges, radars, technical staff, institutions dedicated to research and international linkages, is also upgrading its website and will charge people for some specialised, technical content.

"Public awareness on weather has increased over the past few years and it will only progress," said IMD director general Laxman Singh Rathore.

He said that on average about 5 lakh people per month went to IMD’s website in 2013-14. This year, it was about 9 lakh after the monsoon season began. The southwest monsoon runs from June to September.

To keep up with rising demand and the improvement in speeds, the IMD is increasing its bandwidth to 120 Mbps from the current 90 Mbps, and is also upgrading the website.

"We will soon come with a content management system and geographical Information system website which will have a better speed and access. More products from charts, high resolution pictures, animation of maps etc will be there," said LR Meena, head of IMD’s IT division.

Not everything will be free on the upgraded website. "We will charge for certain products like radar images or high resolution pictures whose usage will be by commercial institutions," said Meena, who added that IMD will invest Rs 6-7 crore on the website development.

Traders and dealers are devouring weather data on IMD’s website. They are particularly concerned as the drought in 2009 triggered a relentless bout of food inflation, impacting bond prices and shares of companies that count on rural markets for sales.

The website has a rich collection of data on rainfall since the beginning of the last century, current data that is updated throughout the day, detailed satellite maps, research papers, analyses of past monsoons and predictions based on scientific observations. Users vary from companies, traders, farmers, pilots to regular consumers.

"The accuracy of weather forecast is higher now both in time and space (going to tehsil level) and hence people are creating a culture of extracting more value to their lives by looking at forecasts," said Jatin Singh, CEO, Skymet.

Noida-based Skymet Weather Service says its number of page views has jumped. "We have 68% repeat visitors who spend on an average 2.5 minutes on the website," said Singh. The greater the traffic, the higher the advertising revenue.

"Every click on the advertisement earns me 3-4 cents," Singh said. Skymet has 20,000 mobile app users and expects that to increase with more smartphones and better internet services. Kolkata-based Express Weather is focusing on mobile apps.

It has a user base of more than 10,000 farmers. "In an El Nino year like this when rains are unevenly distributed, the need to have better access to data is critical for farmers. We are looking at a 30% increase in our user base this year," said Angshujyoti Das, who runs Express Weather.

He said that awareness of weather was much more than in previous years and the market was ready for new products. Looking at the demand it aims to provide real-time information on its website by next year.