In a first of its kind move in India, Andhra Pradesh has developed a system to forecast lightning that claims several lives during the pre-monsoon season in May-June every year. AP was in fact able to save some lives in Chittoor and Anantapur in the last two weeks by alerting people in a dozen villages there about possible lightning strikes.
AP State Disaster Mitigation Society (APSDMS), which works under the Department of Revenue and Relief, has put in place a forewarning system of lightning with the support of ISRO and a US based Earth Networks. Earth Networks is a weather monitoring and forewarning technology firm with around 1,200 sensors in 40 countries.
In 2015, Andhra Pradesh had recorded 75 deaths due to lightning strikes in remote villages and semi-urban areas. So far the government had been left helpless in tackling this grave problem.
These southernmost districts account for a large number of lightning in late summer. On 16 May, the revenue department of the government issued a warning half an hour in advance about the possibility of a lightning strike in Kuppam and Palamaner mandals of Chittoor district.
The village administration publicised the same in the villages.
Exactly as predicted, lightning struck at Byreddypalle in Kuppam mandal but there was no loss of life. The next day, the authorities again warned against possibile lightning in Anantapur district’s Gummagatta village. The village witnessed the lighting strike, but people escaped the damage.
The APSDMS authorities, which had developed the technology with the help of other associates, has made a presentation in the second week of May in a Cabinet meeting chaired by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, officials told The Sunday Guardian. The CM approved the funds meant for tie-up with Earth Networks and ISRO.
The CM suggested that the lightning information gathered from Earth Networks and ISRO could be shared with people in the affected areas through different media including electronic and social networks to minimise damage. APDMA officials have informed the Cabinet that they were in touch with the students of Kuppam engineering college who had developed an App to alert the public on this.
AP Deputy CM K.E. Krishna Murthy, who holds the revenue and relief ministry, told this newspaper on phone from Amaravati that the officials would be encouraged to extensively utilise the lightning forewarning technology and minimise damage.
“Once this app is fully developed, people in danger zones will be alerted through their smartphones,” he said.
Presently, the authorities set up 14 sensors in Kuppam, Anantapur, Kurnool, Kadapa, Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam to predict lightning strikes and efforts are underway to set them up in another eight areas where there is high probability of lightning disasters. APSDMS commissioner M.V. Seshagiri Babu said the sensors would be set up soon across the state.
As per this technology, the system can predict lightning with 90% accuracy within a radius of 2km.
Of around a dozen forewarnings issued by the APSDMS in the last few days, 90% were proven right. Engineers working with the society said that they were even able to estimate the intensity of a lightning.
The sensors fixed on high rise towers in vulnerable areas capture the electromagnetic activity in clouds and feed the data to the control command set up of APSMDS near Amaravati. There the data is analysed and based on the scale of activity, warnings are issued to people in different areas.
APSDMS uses the general weather warning system of ISRO and the specific data provided by Earth Networks which has developed technology to measure in-cloud activity.
As per this system, lightning activity is divided into three categories. If it flashes 5 to 15 times in a minute, it is L 1, if it is 15 to25 times a minute, it is L 2 and if the flashes cross 25 times per minute, it is L3, which is very dangerous.
The Deputy CM told this newspaper that many other states in the country are showing interest in studying AP’s lightning forecast system.
“It is a fact that the country suffers a huge loss of human life and cattle every year becaus of lightning. Any advance warning can help minimise the loss,” he said.