Adithya Ramesh is an avid biker who loves to ride along the Western Ghats across Karnataka and Maharashtra border. As enjoyable as his rides were turning out to be, he often received heavy and destructive rainfalls that led him to his new-found interest. If you thought he became a mountain biker, then guessed wrong. He found his new passion of actually tracking rainfall numbers.
The pandemic has brought out a lot of hidden talents in many. While some became chefs, entrepreneurs, and inventors, Bengaluru also saw a rise in weather tracking and blogging.
Ramesh, an IT professional who took to weather forecasting in 2020, loves to track rainfall across the Western Ghats. “I always had the passion to time my monsoon bike rides and that is how I picked up interest in forecasting,” he says, adding that the pandemic allowed him more time to track the rain patterns.
“I also provide a brief analysis of how the rainfall patterns change in a particular region compared to its previous year,” says Ramesh, who uses Twitter to give weather updates.
Falling in love with weather blogging is also Adarsh Gowda, a stock broker. He was almost washed away on his two-wheeler during the October rains in the city. He ended up with a fracture but he also fell in love with weather blogging. “After the accident, I realised that there is a lack of information on rain updates. I started wanting to know for myself but soon moved to helping others and providing accurate weather forecasts,” Gowda says, adding that he weather blogging seriously since 2021. “I spend at least two hours at midnight tracking and analysing the weather forecast and tweeting it the next day,” he adds.
It’s not as easy as it looks though. Interestingly, weather enthusiasts point out that there have been unusual weather patterns during the pandemic, especially as the city witnessed above normal rainfall and less heat.
“The lockdown reduced pollution to some extent in the last two years, making a marginal impact on Bengaluru’s climate,” adds Gowda.
Taking a more established front was Anantha Krishna and his team who started Frizzle Weather, a hyperlocal weather predictions website.
“We help individuals and businesses with hyperlocal weather predictions to make better decisions. Our blogs give insights on how logistics and goods can be managed effectively in locations with extreme weather conditions and how rains can play a spoilsport for outdoor games. It also helps one understand the impact of weather forecasting in tourism,” explains Krishna, who launched the startup in his last year of college.
Meanwhile, Vijay Anand has been a weather enthusiast for the pa s t seven years but took to active weather blogging on Twi t ter only when the workfrom- home model kicked in. “I used to talk about rainfall predictions with my flatmates and colleagues. But once the lockdown and subsequently the work-fromhome system kicked in, I became vocal about weather predictions on social media. I got more bandwidth d uring lockdown to predict rainfall, as ses s wind speed and reasons for rainfall in Bengaluru,” says Anand, a software engineer.