India puts its boots on in battle with capricious weather

New Delhi

INDIA'S ability to predict the sort of devastating rainfall that struck Mumbai last week is set to get a major boost next year.

The heaviest rainfall since 2005 killed a dozen people in India's financial capital, disrupted stock and bond trading and halted a suburban train network that carries about eight million people a day. Local residents and civic authorities struggled to cope as most roads were submerged and commuters waded through waist-deep floodwater.

While the India Meteorological Department accurately predicted the heavy rain for the broader Mumbai region and its sprawling suburbs, its capacity to forecast rain in a small geographical area should improve drastically by the middle of next year when the government installs two more supercomputers and a suite of new radars. That'll give it the same forecasting power as the UK, US and Australia's, according to the man responsible for the 1…