This rainy season, Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh are worst hit by the cloudbursts causing havoc to the people and properties in affected areas.
The latest being the flash flood triggered by the cloudburst in a remote village in Kistwar district of Jammu Division that has taken seven lives, many rescued injured and over two dozen persons missing till the last report came in. Two more incidents occurred, one in Rajouri and other near Amarnath Cave.
The J&K Union Territory Administration has already started the rescue and relief work but the remoteness of the area has been causing hurdles in the relief operation. The Administration has to chalk out a workable plan to create well equipped rescue and relief centres at various accessible locations covering the maximum hill districts under its Disaster Management Department.
Experts on Wednesday said predicting this disaster is difficult as it is mostly a localised event and occurs in the hilly areas. If 10 centimetres of rainfall is received at a station in one hour, the rain event is termed as cloudburst. This sudden discharge of a large amount of water not only leads to human casualties but also loss of property.
One can understand that cloudbursts are not predictable but these are also not normal weather events as it brings havoc to the affected areas and leads to loss of lives and damage to the property.
Although it is difficult to forecast cloudbursts, doppler radars can be very helpful in predicting them. Nowcasts can be given three hours prior to the event, he pointed out. But not every place may have radar, especially the Himalayan region.
According to a written response by Earth Sciences minister in Lok Sabha, who incidentally represent Kistwar district on his Lok Sabha constituency, on July 23 said that the Himalayan region has seven Doppler radars — two in Jammu and Kashmir (Sonmarg and Srinagar-both in Kashmir valley), one each in Uttarakhand (Kufri), Mukteshwar (Uttarakhand), Mohanbari (Assam), Meghalaya (Sohri) and Tripura (Agartala).
Minister said that two sites for installation of two more Doppler Weather Radars (DWR) in Himachal Pradesh have been identified and the completion of the project for installation of DWRs is expected by December 2022.
The hilly regions are often prone to such cloudbursts and resultant flash-floods. The major geographical territory in Jammu Province is hilly region that also includes the constituency of the concerned minister in charge of Earth Science Department. It is thus expected of the minister to spare some resources for installing such DWRs in hilly areas to monitor such formation of huge clouds due to the local topography or orographic factors.
