NEW YORK — The National Weather Service upgraded its forecast model, with an eye on predicting extreme weather events better and faster.
Meteorologists say Monday’s improvement should help forecast hurricanes, blizzards and downpours. The new version in tests beat the older version in this month’s Colorado snowstorm, Hurricanes Dorian and Michael, and the massive downpours in the Southeast a year ago.
“This substantial upgrade to the GFS, along with ongoing upgrades to our supercomputing capacity, demonstrates our commitment to advancing weather forecasting to fulfill our mission of protecting life and property,” said NOAA’s National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini. “Today’s upgrade also establishes a strong foundation for further planned enhancements that will allow for the assimilation of even more data into the model.”
The weather service chief also says the model will improve day-to-day forecasts but acknowledges it still doesn’t beat the European weather model.
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