Odisha Expands Weather Network with Sambalpur Doppler Radar to Protect 13 Districts

17 Sep 2026, 05:55 by Vinay Kakkad · KalingaTV

Sambalpur: Western Odisha’s disaster preparedness apparatus received a significant technological upgrade on Wednesday as Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi commissioned an indigenously manufactured Doppler Weather Radar at Kainsir, addressing an enduring vulnerability across the state’s interior river basins and industrial corridors.

The newly commissioned installation, hosted formally during an event at Gangadhar Meher University, functions continuously to capture high-precision atmospheric shifts within an immediate 250-kilometre perimeter while monitoring broader weather fronts trailing up to roughly 450 kilometres away. Built under the domestic ‘Make in India’ manufacturing programme, the unit operates as Odisha’s third radar installation, augmenting established coastal surveillance stations located at Paradip and Gopalpur.

The facility is configured to detect and issue advance warnings for violent atmospheric phenomena, including lightning strikes, severe thunderstorms, hailstorms, and sudden torrential cloudbursts. By calculating precipitation levels on a 10-minute cycle down to a spatial resolution of 150 metres, the radar’s real-time telemetry will feed directly into water discharge models for the Hirakud reservoir, allowing dam operators to refine upstream flood mitigation and reservoir inflow tracking.

Beyond water management, regional weather alerts will extend across 13 administrative districts: Sambalpur, Bargarh, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh, Deogarh, Sonepur, Balangir, Boudh, Nuapada, Angul, Kalahandi, Keonjhar, and Dhenkanal. The sensor footprint also encompasses contiguous districts across the state borders in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

For the agrarian economy of the Mahanadi basin—most notably the extensive paddy acreage of Bargarh district—the hyper-local forecast cadence offers an operational buffer against unseasonal crop damage. Industrial plants, transport networks, energy transmission utilities, and electrical grid control centers are likewise positioned to calibrate field operations ahead of destructive weather.

At the inauguration, Chief Minister Majhi explained that Western Odisha holds acute regional significance in natural disaster planning, stating that integrating the interior plateau into the primary meteorological grid is central to the state’s transition toward proactive, technology-driven civil protection.