Meet Faizan Arif: New ‘weatherman’ of Kashmir

Srinagar: A youth from Srinagar is becoming a new weatherman in the valley, who by using top weather models of the world provides a perfect weather prediction report each day on social media.

Faizan Arif, 20, a youth from Nawakadal area of Srinagar who is pursuing his graduation from Amity University Lucknow with physics as one of the main subjects is providing information to thousands of his followers on his weather channel “Kashmir Weather”, available on almost every social media platform.

Faizan while talking to Kashmir News Observer said that since his childhood he used to wait outside his house to see lightning and thunder, the pattern of rain along with the formation of clouds which slowly inclined him towards weather prediction.

“I started going through different weather models and I found them quite interesting with so much to learn about the climate,” he said.

Faizan said every day, he goes through reports by UKMO, GFS, GDPS, ECMWF, ICON, Access Global and others to understand weather pattern and on the basis of all the information prepares the weather report.

Despite that Faizan doesn’t have sophisticated equipment to match the meteorology department but he claims his analysis is equal and sometimes more accurate, adding that he keeps an eye on humidity, wind direction, rainfall and temperature as weather can change quickly.

Faizan says predicting the weather has become his passion and will now make his career in the same field by pursuing MSc in Meteorology and so on.

Faizan also claims that he last year in November has given a detailed long-range weather forecast (for November 2020 to February 2021) for Jammu and Kashmir – predicting the behaviour of temperature and precipitation during the winter and before him no one has issued such a detailed forecast for the region.

“Besides this, my research with Sonam Lotus and Mukhtar Ahmad is currently in progress. The research is based on the effect of La Niña and El Niño on precipitation and temperature pattern of Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

“I have sometimes received jibes from some people who believe weather forecasting is anti-Islamic ,” he said, adding that, he only predict the weather based on the knowledge Allah has given to us but only Allah knows and decides what will happen at any point. (KNO)