Partly cloudy with thundershowers towards evening or night. The humidity could be low and day temperature will be around 33 degree Celsius. The coming days would see rains with the monsoon setting over Kerala shores... The weatherman is at it all the time. Mild showers or high noon, all want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow, or maybe the day after. The real weatherman who silently observes the cloud formation, the dip in the temperature or the direction of the wind, is an unknown face to all. He is A Muthuchami, the head of the
meteorological department. While studying the weather, he has also fallen in love. With Bangalore's salubrious climate.
This 53-year-old weatherman starts off with some fundas about the weather. "If the weather is challenging, it makes people active, like in European countries. Though we feel easily exhausted due to high temperature during summer in Chennai, people work hard to complete their work faster. Here, the low temperature of Bangalore makes me feel lazy."
Starting out as a private school teacher, the state's top weatherman, who aspired to be an IPS officer, landed up as the research assistant at the
Cyclone Warning Research Centre (CWRC) in Chennai where he spent the next decade.
Born in Vedepatti, a village 80 km away from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and educated in a government school, he is the first to get a post-graduate degree in his village.
After completing his Masters in mathematics from PSG College of Arts and Science and MPhil from Ramanujam Institute of Advance Studies in Mathematics from Chennai, Muthuchami worked for three years as a lecturer in a government college in Tamil Nadu. On passing the UPSC exam, he was appointed as the Assistant
Meteorologist Grade-2 in 1985.
Muthuchami remembers his year of joining the Met department as the year of the launch of INSAT-1B and installation of 100 disaster warning instruments in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Moving from a researcher at CWCR, he served at the agro-meteorological advisory unit and as meteorologist at Chennai airport. Last January, he was posted as the director of the Met department in Karnataka.
Coming from a farming community, Muthuchami was well aware of the significance of the weather even before he joined the department. "Life depends on weather. World history has changed due to
weather conditions. The Germans were defeated due to bad weather that prevailed during the Second World War," Muthuchami says.
Married to Dheivani -- his pillar of strength -- they have two kids. Daughter Uma Maheshwari, a bio-pharmaceutical engineer, works in Chennai while son Arun Mahesh, has just written the PUC exam and is interested in a career in Electronics.
For this disciplinarian coming from a research background, the role of administrator has been challenging. A year and a half later as the state's Met chief, the biggest challenge for Muthuchami and his family has been in learning the local language. "Everyone here speaks or understands Tamil. So, the need to learn the local language has never arisen. But, I have learnt to recognize the Kannada alphabet and am also making an attempt to learn the language," he says.
With all his siblings involved in agricultural activity, Muthuchami plans to return to farming after his retirement and continue with his research work. If there's one thing he is not too happy with, it is the reach of agro-
meteorology forecasting to farmers.
The weatherman has some good things to say about the climatic conditions in Karnataka -- the geographic position of the state makes it disaster-free. So, weather forecasts in the state do not have critical significance and public awareness about weather conditions is yet to catch up.
But, there's a cautionary note -- in places which are not hit by disasters, even a sudden heavy rainfall causes chaos as people are not prepared to accept the change.
He recalls some of the disappointing and challenging moments as a meteorologist. In 1989, there was an intense cyclone that crossed Kavali between Nellore and Ongole causing extensive damage to the area. "We had forecast a cyclone and people were warned, but when it actually occurred, it wasn't noticed by the weather
observatory. Next day, when we saw the damage the cyclone had caused, it was shocking as we had not expected that scale of damage. Until then, it was believed that cyclone had a uniform pattern, but Kavali was a good learning experience."
And, of course, the tsunami. "When it occurred, I was watching television at home. As the news was flashed, I guessed it was a tsunami. At that time, not many were even aware of this type of cyclone or have the instruments to detect it. I knew as I had a chapter in my tenth standard (aliparalagal -- huge waves in the sea) on the tsunami.''
Most disappointing for him was the Orissa cyclone which was mistaken for a routine cyclone and with nowhere to run, people were trapped in a water-locked area. "Though the damage caused was unpreventable, several lives could have been saved. As meteorologist, I regret this the most."
Commenting on the advances in weather forecasting, he says science has not developed much in this area because of which weather is still unpredictable!
