Telangana Weatherman: The 18-Year-Old Winning Hearts with Quick Weather Updates
Hyderabad: The eighteen-year-old weather enthusiast from the city, T. Balaji, more familiar as Telangana Weatherman on Twitter, is winning accolades for his accurate and lightning-quick weather updates. The city looked forward to the updates especially during the past week of heavy rains.
Balaji, a second year civil engineering student in JNTU, told Deccan Chronicle that he was always fascinated with rains and clouds. This encouraged him to study geography in high school. It was during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 that Balaji started learning about the weather.
“During the lockdown, I took the subject more seriously and started studying about it. In October 2020, I started the ‘Telangana Weatherman’ page on Twitter and started posting updates. It’s been three years now that I have been consistently reporting and posting the weather,” said Balaji.
The Twitter handle of Balaji has more than 63k followers including weather experts and government officials who ask him for updates before planning their day or when the weather turns bad.
Balaji said he always managed to find time amidst his schedule of college, studies and exams and also in the free time that he got on hands.
“I start my day with the weather update and end it with it. It has become my ritual. On a regular day, I post updates in the morning and evening. On the critical days, I spend most of the time giving frequent updates. Earlier, when I started my journey, I used to struggle for hours to study and understand the weather. Now, I usually take an hour,” he added.
Balaji usually does two types of analysis – ground analysis of the directions of clouds and the real time weather systems and another is the scientific model analysis of various models to make the forecast.
“ I refer to multiple charts and weather model systems such as Global Forecast System (GFS), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), German national weather service ICON (Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic), UKMO, Navy Global Environmental Model (NAVGEM), National Meteorological Center of CMA, Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), IMD etc to understand the weather systems and a consensus model to reach a nearly accurate weather forecast”, Balaji told Deccan Chronicle.
As a single child of high school teachers, Balaji says the journey has been fascinating and he feels happy as well as overwhelmed with the recognition his work.
While his passion drives Balaji every single day to read and write about the weather, he does not aspire to pursue a career in the subject.
“I want to pursue my career either as a civil engineer or in the corporate sector. I do the weather forecasting as a hobby and passion and will continue to do it. I feel humbled to be able to contribute to society in my own small and unique way,” said Balaji.
