Hyderabad temporarily loses public access to IMD’s real-time weather data; services hampered

Hyderabad: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has restored public access to the Hyderabad city Doppler radar. This comes after a brief period of information blackout when only the IMD staff were allowed to access radar data, said independent forecaster T Balaji, popularly known as Telangana Weatherman.

Public couldn’t access real-time weather updates

Balaji alleged that for the first time in India, a city Doppler radar was made inaccessible to the public while remaining operational for IMD staff.

“All the radars of India are in public access except the Hyderabad radar. The radar was working fine; check their bulletins. But it was accessible only for the staff of IMD, not even for other government departments of Telangana,” Balaji said, speaking to NewsMeter.

He explained that IMD’s Doppler radar data refers to real-time weather imagery used to track rainfall, thunderstorms and wind patterns, and is normally accessible through the IMD’s official website and radar portal.

During the restriction, the radar remained functional internally but was removed from the public online feed.

He noted that while the inaccessibility did not affect his forecasting, which relies on paid subscriptions, private systems, and other data sources, it posed a challenge for government control rooms and the general public.

How making radar data inaccessible affects government functioning

“For me, radar inaccessibility is not at all a problem, but for the government control room and general public, it will be a problem,” he said.

He clarified that the Telangana State Control Room, a disaster management and emergency monitoring centre, depends on live radar to track storm cells and issue location-specific alerts. Without it, they had to rely on delayed updates instead of real-time information.

According to Balaji, the issue became apparent over the past few days when the IMD radar site stopped displaying public data. He said the restriction lasted for at least two days earlier this week, though the exact start time was unclear.

“At 5:30 pm on Thursday, we gave our weather updates. However, the IMD radar was not functioning [for the public], so the control room personnel couldn’t understand the current situation. The administration faced a lot of problems,” he explained.

He added that this scenario was unprecedented in his experience: “Before, when radar issues used to happen, the data would be inaccessible to everyone. But now, the public has no access while the IMD staff is the only one in control of the data.”

‘How can a public organisation keep the public out?’

Balaji questioned the reasons behind a publicly funded agency restricting access to the citizens.

“How can a publicly funded organisation like IMD, using funds from hard-working taxpayers like us, make our products inaccessible to us? This is like stealing away the crop from the farmers,” he said.

He also pointed out that there is no regulation limiting weather forecasts to IMD, citing private forecaster Skymet as an example of independent forecasting in India.

Balaji claimed that after his public post about the issue, access to the radar was restored.

“Finally, IMD gave access to the radar to the public, which will help everyone. Thank you, everyone, for raising this issue with higher authorities. Hopefully, they don’t make it inaccessible again in the future,” he said.

‘Hyderabad radar highly dysfunctional’

While public access has returned, Balaji said the Hyderabad radar remains ‘very dysfunctional’ and needs consistent, reliable performance to be effective for real-time weather tracking.

The IMD has not issued a public statement regarding the temporary restriction of access or the reasons behind it.

IMD clarifies radar image outage during Hyderabad storm

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued an official clarification after online claims alleged that the department deliberately stopped uploading radar images during the severe weather on August 6.

According to Dr K Nagaratna, Scientist-F, Director V/C and Head of the Meteorological Centre, Hyderabad, the radar system was fully operational during the storm. However, a communication failure from 0900 UTC on August 6 prevented radar products from being uploaded to the IMD website.

Alerts continued despite website issue: IMD

The IMD stressed that despite the website issue, alert bulletins were issued throughout the day, accompanied by live radar images from the office.

“IMD works under clear established guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures and would never deviate from them,” Dr Nagaratna stated, adding that the department is the official weather agency of the Government of India and operates with transparency.