Met Dept launches mobile app to update Kenyans on incoming storms
The Kenya
Meteorological Department has launched a new mobile application to give
near-real-time information on storms across the country.
Dubbed ‘FASTA’, an
acronym for Forecasting African Storms Application, the platform was announced
on Tuesday and is a basic app that gives heavy rainfall warning of a location for up to the next two hours.
One can also
search for a location in Kenya to fetch rainfall information, although the app
does not give temperature forecasts or information about other meteorological
phenomena.
The FASTA app is
only available on Google Play Store for Android users. It does not require
sign-up and all one needs after downloading it is to ensure the location
setting is turned on for their device.
On the Play Store,
the app is labelled as still under development and users can give feedback to
optimize it.
Some new users on
Tuesday reported getting error messages when they tried to fetch the rainfall
forecast for their location.
The Met Department
gives weather forecasts at the beginning of every week, and the app comes at a
time when Kenya is experiencing the long rain season which usually begins
mid-March.
The meteorological
agency has indicated that rains are expected to go on until June.
Hundreds of
families have so far been affected by floods in Nairobi, Baringo, Mwea, Tana
River and Kirinyaga since the onset of the long rain season.
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