NOAA has just completed the final phase of a nine-year, $180 million plan to upgrade the computer system that powers our nation's forecasts for the National Weather Service. These aren't your parent's computers. These IBM supercomputers would fill about half of a tennis court and are 34 times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer that existed just 10 years ago. According to NOAA, it would take someone with a calculator 3 million years to match the number of calculations the new "Stratus" supercomputer system can whip out in one second.
All this extra power should enable the use of more complex weather models that should improve accuracy and lead to more lead time for severe weather warnings.
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