"In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy was barreling down on the East Coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dropped the ball.

Their weather-predicting supercomputer, known as the Global Forecasting System, was hideously out of date, far behind the capabilities of the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting, which correctly predicted the storm. When Sandy took an abrupt left turn and headed straight for the Eastern seaboard, the NOAA undersold the storm’s danger, thanks mostly to poor predictions from its weather computers. The storm wreaked havoc across New York, New Jersey, and other heavily populated areas, and the public called for a change.

Now, NOAA has a new computer, a massive, school-bus sized machine capable of making 3 quadrillion calculations per second — roughly the processing power of 12,500 high-end laptops duct taped together."

Read Article Here