UttaraPedia
A weather screenshot arrives in a family group with a dramatic caption. Before forwarding it to someone travelling in Uttarakhand, open the original source. A familiar district name or an alarming colour cannot tell you whether the information is still valid.
Find the place and the product
Read the named district or station and the type of information. IMD provides separate current-weather, forecast, nowcast and warning products. A reading from a station and a forecast for a wider area are different kinds of information; keep the product's own wording with the location.
Write down the place you need information for before searching. If your journey crosses several districts, a bulletin for the destination alone does not describe every part of the route. Avoid changing a district label to the name of a nearby town when sharing it.
Separate issue time from the period covered
IMD's district-warning fields distinguish the issue date and time from the dates covered by the forecast. Read both. The moment a message reached your phone is neither the time the bulletin was issued nor proof that it applies now.
Here is a deliberately fictional exercise. A card says “issued 08:00” and “valid until 11:00”, but someone forwards it at 16:00. What is missing before you can use it? At minimum you need the date, location, time zone and the current replacement bulletin. The numbers here are for practice, not a weather warning.
Read the explanation beside the colour
Look for the stated weather phenomenon and any accompanying advice. Keep the legend and the complete relevant text visible. A cropped colour patch with a new caption can remove the part that explains what the notice actually means.
Share a checkable message
When useful, send the official link with the district, issue date and time, and the applicable period. Say when you checked it. If you cannot recover the original source, describe the screenshot as unverified instead of adding confident instructions of your own.
Do not turn weather information into road clearance
For a real departure, use current official weather guidance and separately check transport or road notices from the responsible authorities. A weather bulletin alone does not confirm that a particular road is open. This article teaches how to read a notice; it contains no forecast for today and no recommendation that a route is safe to travel.
Sources and practice
IMD: forecast, current weather and warning fields · IMD: district-wise warnings
