India, Oct. 10 -- Sometime around the second week of May 2025, the India Meteorological Department (IMD), locked up its Automatic Weather Station/Automatic Rain Gauge (AWS/ARG) portal for the public. This has significantly hampered the work of independent weather analysts, bloggers and enthusiasts who had been using this data for localised weather analysis and even providing weather forecasts/alerts through social media platforms, especially on X (formally Twitter).

"It was around June 2025 when we realised that the AWS portal was no longer accessible", Rushikesh Agre, an independent weather analyst from Maharashtra who runs the profile Mumbai Rains on X told Down To Earth (DTE). Agre has 109,000 followers on X and does most of his weath...