Be concerned about the weather forecast

[longknife]

 

[waltky]

Nat'l. Weather Service gets big ol' computer...

National Weather Service gets big computing boost
16 May`13 - The U.S. National Weather Service is getting a quantum jump in computing power that will significantly improve its forecasting and storm tracking abilities to better protect the country from severe weather.

"This is a game changer," Louis Uccellini, who took over as director of the National Weather Service in February, told Reuters in an interview, calling it "the biggest increase in operational capacity that we've ever had." The Weather Services' global and national weather prediction efforts have long been hampered by aging technology and a lack of computer power to support day-to-day operations. But Uccellini said that was all due to change through upgrades of its IBM system that will give it more than 25 times the computer power it has today.

Over the next two years, the results should be apparent through enhancements across the whole range of products and services the Weather Service produces, focusing on everything from routine weather to tornadoes and hurricanes to floods, droughts and blizzards. With the U.S. economy vulnerable to severe weather events that can cost billions of dollars a year, the boost in computing power is sure to come as good news to many, especially given concerns that climate change is fueling more extreme weather. That includes millions of people living in hurricane danger zones and U.S. oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico, which is frequently threatened by tropical cyclones. The Gulf accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. oil production. About 30 percent of U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity and 40 percent of the country's refining capacity is concentrated on the Gulf Coast.

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite image taken on February 9, 2013 at 7:01 a.m. EST (1200 GMT) shows two low pressure systems that came together and formed a giant nor'easter centered right over New England creating blizzards from Massachusetts to New York.

A primary IBM machine in Reston, Virginia, and an auxiliary computer in Orlando, Florida, both will be getting the upgrades, which were largely made possible through $25 million in funding from the "Hurricane Sandy supplemental" bill recently approved by Congress, Uccellini said. He spoke from the Weather Service's headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, on the eve of a report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday about its performance up to and during Hurricane Sandy last year. The Weather Service is a branch of NOAA, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

To be sure, meteorologists say the Weather Service and its Miami-based National Hurricane Center did a good job forecasting the onslaught of Sandy, which the NOAA report said had caused more than 200 deaths and more than $50 billion in damages in the United States. But the report makes no mention of the fact that a European forecast predicted Sandy's so-called "left hook", which put it on a track from the east into New Jersey and New York, days ahead of the Weather Service, which initially indicated the storm would remain out at sea.

'SECOND TO NONE'

 

[longknife]

Can you remember back to when we didn't have satellites to show the weather patterns?

I remember when The Farmer's Almanac was considered to be the most accurate source of weather forecasts. [Wonder if it still isn't?]

 

[Mr. H.]

It was exciting, as a kid, to wake up not knowing (or caring) what the weather would be.

 

[Old Rocks]

Nat'l. Weather Service gets big ol' computer...

National Weather Service gets big computing boost
16 May`13 - The U.S. National Weather Service is getting a quantum jump in computing power that will significantly improve its forecasting and storm tracking abilities to better protect the country from severe weather.

"This is a game changer," Louis Uccellini, who took over as director of the National Weather Service in February, told Reuters in an interview, calling it "the biggest increase in operational capacity that we've ever had." The Weather Services' global and national weather prediction efforts have long been hampered by aging technology and a lack of computer power to support day-to-day operations. But Uccellini said that was all due to change through upgrades of its IBM system that will give it more than 25 times the computer power it has today.

Over the next two years, the results should be apparent through enhancements across the whole range of products and services the Weather Service produces, focusing on everything from routine weather to tornadoes and hurricanes to floods, droughts and blizzards. With the U.S. economy vulnerable to severe weather events that can cost billions of dollars a year, the boost in computing power is sure to come as good news to many, especially given concerns that climate change is fueling more extreme weather. That includes millions of people living in hurricane danger zones and U.S. oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico, which is frequently threatened by tropical cyclones. The Gulf accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. oil production. About 30 percent of U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity and 40 percent of the country's refining capacity is concentrated on the Gulf Coast.

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite image taken on February 9, 2013 at 7:01 a.m. EST (1200 GMT) shows two low pressure systems that came together and formed a giant nor'easter centered right over New England creating blizzards from Massachusetts to New York.

A primary IBM machine in Reston, Virginia, and an auxiliary computer in Orlando, Florida, both will be getting the upgrades, which were largely made possible through $25 million in funding from the "Hurricane Sandy supplemental" bill recently approved by Congress, Uccellini said. He spoke from the Weather Service's headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, on the eve of a report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday about its performance up to and during Hurricane Sandy last year. The Weather Service is a branch of NOAA, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

To be sure, meteorologists say the Weather Service and its Miami-based National Hurricane Center did a good job forecasting the onslaught of Sandy, which the NOAA report said had caused more than 200 deaths and more than $50 billion in damages in the United States. But the report makes no mention of the fact that a European forecast predicted Sandy's so-called "left hook", which put it on a track from the east into New Jersey and New York, days ahead of the Weather Service, which initially indicated the storm would remain out at sea.

'SECOND TO NONE'

Yes, after the European Model predicted the route of Sandy five days out, we started asking the obvious questions. What do they have that we don't? Turns out they had 10 times the computing power for weather forecasts. Once again we are doing catchup on a technology we invented.

 

[whitehall]

You almost gotta laugh, they have weather people on the road chasing tornadoes at probably a pretty big expense and they haven't caught one yet. The weather stars jet around the Country doing inane stories primarily about the fake science of Global Warming but they didn't have the money to upgrade the machines that they depend on. If you watched the weather channel last year you would have caught the fact that our weather scientists thought the European computers were superior and they used them to predict US weather.

 

[skookerasbil]

The k00ks are cheering!!!!


Computer models are a joke by the way.......

 

[Mr. H.]

Nat'l. Weather Service gets big ol' computer...

National Weather Service gets big computing boost
16 May`13 - The U.S. National Weather Service is getting a quantum jump in computing power that will significantly improve its forecasting and storm tracking abilities to better protect the country from severe weather.

"This is a game changer," Louis Uccellini, who took over as director of the National Weather Service in February, told Reuters in an interview, calling it "the biggest increase in operational capacity that we've ever had." The Weather Services' global and national weather prediction efforts have long been hampered by aging technology and a lack of computer power to support day-to-day operations. But Uccellini said that was all due to change through upgrades of its IBM system that will give it more than 25 times the computer power it has today.

Over the next two years, the results should be apparent through enhancements across the whole range of products and services the Weather Service produces, focusing on everything from routine weather to tornadoes and hurricanes to floods, droughts and blizzards. With the U.S. economy vulnerable to severe weather events that can cost billions of dollars a year, the boost in computing power is sure to come as good news to many, especially given concerns that climate change is fueling more extreme weather. That includes millions of people living in hurricane danger zones and U.S. oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico, which is frequently threatened by tropical cyclones. The Gulf accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. oil production. About 30 percent of U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity and 40 percent of the country's refining capacity is concentrated on the Gulf Coast.

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite image taken on February 9, 2013 at 7:01 a.m. EST (1200 GMT) shows two low pressure systems that came together and formed a giant nor'easter centered right over New England creating blizzards from Massachusetts to New York.

A primary IBM machine in Reston, Virginia, and an auxiliary computer in Orlando, Florida, both will be getting the upgrades, which were largely made possible through $25 million in funding from the "Hurricane Sandy supplemental" bill recently approved by Congress, Uccellini said. He spoke from the Weather Service's headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, on the eve of a report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday about its performance up to and during Hurricane Sandy last year. The Weather Service is a branch of NOAA, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

To be sure, meteorologists say the Weather Service and its Miami-based National Hurricane Center did a good job forecasting the onslaught of Sandy, which the NOAA report said had caused more than 200 deaths and more than $50 billion in damages in the United States. But the report makes no mention of the fact that a European forecast predicted Sandy's so-called "left hook", which put it on a track from the east into New Jersey and New York, days ahead of the Weather Service, which initially indicated the storm would remain out at sea.

'SECOND TO NONE'

Yes, after the European Model predicted the route of Sandy five days out, we started asking the obvious questions. What do they have that we don't? Turns out they had 10 times the computing power for weather forecasts. Once again we are doing catchup on a technology we invented.

That's about to change. There's a thread (or post) about new computers for U.S. weather forecasting.