Some Facts:
*Bangladesh had its last major cyclone in 2007.
*Santa Cruz in Mumbai recorded very heavy rainfall of 994 mm in 2005
while Colaba received only 10 percent of that amount of rain on the same day.
The Chennai-based, self-taught weatherman Pradeep John has
such countless information stacked up with him, if not for lack of time, he
would apprise anyone seeking information on weather on captivating
facets of nature.
----
Weather is unpredictable.
It’s perilous to predict rains and cyclones.
It would be too haughty to pinpoint a specific reason like climate
change, El
Nino factor et al for the quirks of nature.
----
His Life
The winds called him. He followed. This is Pradeep John’s story of
romance with monsoon.
For this weatherman the curious affair with rains began with a
cyclonic storm which swept Chennai on October 1994. It was northeast monsoon
season. Pradeep, 12 then a class VII student, was asleep. His father
Ramachandran, a government servant, mother Monickarasi and brother Dileep
Daniel were in the house. It was around 1 am when the sound of heavy rains
pounding on concrete and howling winds, followed by power outage roused him
from sleep.
Pradeep remembers rain and winds raging throughout the night. A holiday
was declared for schools next day. The streets were water-logged. Trees were
uprooted; in his own yard a drumstick tree which he was fond of was not spared
by the winds either.
Pradeep later learnt that the wind speed on that night was somewhere
around 100 km per hour. The city on a single day recorded a rainfall of over
250 mm.
That stormy October night stirred his curiosity and drew him
towards observing and studying rain and wind patterns.
Pradeep recalls he used to dig pits near his house. When it rains he
used to check how much water gets collected in them. Such small experiments,
observations, extensive reading of weather reports published in
newspapers and experience turned him into a self-taught and acclaimed weatherman.
The next copious rains which was etched in his memory, Pradeep
remembers, was in 1996. It was southwest monsoon season. The city recorded 700
mm rainfall on a single day; the highest amount of rainfall recorded by the city
in the last 200 years.
The young Pradeep consistently and carefully read the weather forecasts
published with MSLP (Mean Sea-Level Pressure Analysis) in an English daily. He
saved the paper cuttings of the forecasts.
“Note that was a time when there was no television or computers in our
houses. All that we had was a radio,” Pradeep recalls.
Naturally he was interested in Geography. But his parents wanted him to
study engineering. So he did BE Computer Science course in a city college. His
brother went on to do MBBS course.
Pradeep says that till the year 2005-06 he didn’t have much knowledge
about weather prediction.
He started blogging in 2008. By 2015 he had friends such as K.Eshan
Ahmed of KEA Weather Blog in Chennai and Rajesh Kapadia of (Vagaries
of the Weather blog) Mumbai. A senior blogger Rajesh Kapadia was in
fact like a mentor to him, says Pradeep. Between 2008 to 2014 they
were constantly in touch. They shared information mutually. They used to chat
or call over phone to clarify their doubts and discuss the weatherpatterns.
Pradeep lately tries to
juggle his profession, he holds a managerial post at Tamil Nadu Urban
Infrastructure Financial Services Limited (TNUIFSL) and his passion, as a weather blogger.
There is lot of stress as well, he says.
“But I enjoy it,” he
quickly says.
“At the end of the day it’s not about the number of
blogs I come out with. But the way I am able to stay positively connected with
people. I’m there for people who seek credible information,” he says.
One of his priorities is to
bust myths and fake news that keeps flooding social media. People do get
panicky by such fake news and keeps calling him.
Pradeep doesn’t stop short
of merely updating weather report. He chips in with other information
such as reservoir level etc, to keep the people informed.
Pradeep John lives with his
wife Hannah Shalini and daughter Laura, who is studying class II. Whether Laura
is interested in what her father is involved in?
"She watches clouds
sometimes. But only to the extent whether it would rain and there will be a
holiday for schools. She is only in class II, he points out.
Ends
