• As many as 1,621 people died due to rain and lightning during the four-month period from April to July this year, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

• He added that the Ministry of Home Affairs does not centrally maintain the data of damages due to disasters.

• Lives of 52,367 animals were also lost due to hydro-meteorological disasters and 1,57,817.6 hectares of crop area was affected during this period.

Warning systems for lightning in India

• The central government has approved ‘Mitigation Project on Lightning Safety’ for a total financial outlay of Rs 186.78 crore for 50 lightning-prone districts of 10 states — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

• The aim of this project is to help reduce the mortality of human beings, loss of livestock and damage to infrastructure due to lightning. 

• The project also aims to develop self-reliance through research, development, manufacturing and technological advancements in the field of lightning risk management.

• The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, has established a lightning location network with 112 sensors spread over the country to accurately locate and detect the occurrence of lightning.

• As each sensor can have a coverage radius of 200 to 250 km, the whole country is now covered by this network.

• Using information from the lightning location network, a mobile app, ‘DAMINI: Lightning Alert’, has been developed. It gives the exact location of current lightning strikes around the user location and issues the lightning warning for a 20 and 40 square kilometre radius in advance.

• The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has established a comprehensive system for the seamless monitoring, forecasting and dissemination of warnings for thunderstorm and lightning hazards.

• This system enables location-specific monitoring down to the district and city levels, with temporal resolution ranging from minutes to hours. It currently operates a ground-based lightning detection network comprising 102 sensors strategically distributed across India.

• The IMD issues thunderstorm and lightning warnings up to five days in advance, leveraging Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and synoptic-scale analysis.

• These forecasts are provided in multi-hazard colour-coded formats at the meteorological sub-division and district levels, and are updated every six hours. 

• In addition, IMD provides colour-coded nowcasts for thunderstorms and lightning at district and station levels, updated every three hours.

• These nowcasts are based on satellite imagery, radar observations and data from the ground-based lightning detection network.

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