The 2018 flood in Kerala pointed out the deficiency of density of the weather observation network in the state. State government requested Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India to enhance the the weather prediction services of Kerala vide Letter No. DMA1/447/2018/DMD dated 06.10.2018. The State demanded for hyperlocal predictions as the current prediction by IMD is only at a district resolution, which proved inadequate.

In lieu of hyperlocal predictions from IMD, the State Executive Committee of KSDMA decided to consider the options available in the field. The SEC decided to avail services of private weather agencies in addition to IMD’s services for one year on a pilot basis. Government of Kerala granted permission to source appropriate weather predictions and monitoring tools from private weather agencies namely Skymet, IBM weather Company, Earth Networks and Windy on a nomination basis as a pilot project for 1 year vide GO (Rt) No.450/2020/DMD dated 14-05-2020 and funds were allotted vide GO (Rt) No. 531/2020/DMD dated 19-6-2020.

The State Emergency Operations Centre has also sourced Dangerous Thunderstorm Alert from M/S Earth Networks and hyper local weather predictions from M/S IBM The Weather Company. M/S Skymet also provides predictions. These predictions are integrated into the decision support system of SEOC. The outputs from the private weather companies are sourced only for experimental purposes. If found useful, these predictions will be utilised for warnings after the technical examination of a technical committee and approval of State Executive Committee of KSDMA.