2015 it was, and Chennai faced one of the worst floods ever. People were fighting for their lives, and the rain kept pouring for the days. Oh yes, it was the same November month. The trauma, the rain left still keeps ringing in my mind, even today.
But for Pradeep John, our Tamil Nadu Weatherman, things are different. He had the responsibility of informing the people the right weather, helping them greatly.
For Tamil Nadu Weatherman who has been recording and blogging about the weather for a long time, 2015 certainly was a major turning point, and there is no looking back since then.
It is a dream come true for us when Pradeep John accepted to have a conversation with us. He certainly is one of the best human beings we have ever interviewed.
Ah, he is super-friendly that I know people who actually tried contacting him to know about the weather conditions before fixing their marriage.
We wanted to ask about the same during our interview, Pradeep John quips that he doesn’t know about all these because he seldom turns his phone on.
His sense of humour and the wittiness is something you’d notice when you read his blog. I mean, it is not easy to make people read things and imagine how difficult it is to make someone read a weather blog.
We then moved on for some serious questions, and we asked about where and when the things started.
He says that he always loved watching rains. In 1994, he witnessed cyclone and it’s effect for the first time. The then 12-year-old started to pay more attention to the facts and numbers.
Google wasn’t a thing in 1994. Talking about how he started to collect data, Pradeep says that newspaper played the major role.
He revealed that the family used to buy newspaper regularly, and he would binge into the weather columns that had the numbers about the amount of rainfall, and so on. He used to have paper cuttings of the rainfall amounts and pasted them in his diary. When I was his age, I used to collect Sachin Tendulkar’s picture, but Pradeep John is different.
These numbers fascinated the young kid at that time, and slowly things started for him. He created a blog in 2008 and started to pen about different interesting facts on rains, say, “Top 20 rainfalls in India”.
Predicting the direction of the cyclones is one of the toughest jobs, Pradeep says. He adds that interpretation skills play a vital role here.
For years, Pradeep had very less number of followers, unlike today. Talking about the same, he says that he doesn’t care much about “that” number. He has the happiness of doing what he loves, and that is something unmatchable, he adds.
While Tamil Nadu Weatherman page is one of the famous handles, Pradeep also made sure to write about sports as well. He also runs a blog exclusively to update more on Indian chess, something not many people does. There is a Facebook group called Indian Chess Updates as well.
Before signing off, we asked him to add a few words for the men’s day…
Well, men are equally important when it comes to running the family, and at times, the “sacrifices” they do and the things they emotionally experience goes without notice. Unfortunately, most of the men are not expressive, and it’s high time we realise and address the men’s mental health.
He signs off.
