TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan's National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) on Tuesday (Oct. 13) launched a new mobile weather app that can notify users 30 minutes before rainfall.

As Oct. 13 is designated as International Day for Disaster Reduction, the NCDR chose Tuesday to introduce its "Little Rain Forecast Helper" (落雨小幫手) weather app to help citizens better prepare for expected rainfall. The app allows users to know in advance if precipitation is forecasted in the area with a radius of up to 10 kilometers.

NCDR Director Chen Hong-yu (陳宏宇) explained that the Little Rain Forecast Helper not only offers real-time precipitation information of the user's area but also shows the possible intensity of rainfall over the next hour. He said the developers have combined data from the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) with the Extremely Short-Term Quantitative Precipitation Forecast Technique developed by National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Central University (NCU) to ensure the most accurate predictions.

Meanwhile, NCDR Meteorology Division head Yu Yi-Chiang (于宜強) pointed out that approximately 4,000 entries of atmospheric data are sent back from Taiwan's COSMIC-2 satellite daily and they can improve the precision of weather predictions by 6-10 percent. However, he said the current version of the app can only notify users about the expected precipitation and not the size of the rainfall, reported CNA.

"Little Rain Forecast Helper" provides real-time precipitation information. (Ministry of Science and Technology image)