Responding to typhoon Kajiki: weather alert helps farmers in Myanmar

Typhoon Kajiki is moving towards eastern Myanmar, causing already heavy flooding in Vietnam the past few days.
As Weather Impact has just launched an operational weather service in Myanmar, we follow the situation closely, to be able to send timely weather alerts to farmers.

Through a dedicated web-viewer on the Weather Impact website, we provide a wide range of agricultural weather insights (seasonal outlooks, rainy season updates, daily forecasts, and climate anomaly information) with valuable input data from ECMWF. Our partners at Village Link then translate these into practical and easy-to-understand messages on their app 𝘏𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘵 𝘛𝘰𝘦, where farmers can see, like, and comment.

This Htwet Toe app is such a powerful app, it’s basically a Facebook for farmers. To give a sense of scale: it’s the 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡.𝟭 𝗳𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝘆𝗮𝗻𝗺𝗮𝗿, with over 100k downloads on Google Play and about 350k farmers reached in 6 regions of Myanmar.

And when extreme events happen, like Typhoon Kajiki, we issue special warnings. Within an hour of us sending an update to our Village Link colleagues, they posted it on 𝘏𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘵 𝘛𝘰𝘦, and over 100 farmers had already seen it! This way farmers can take action when it matters most.