Dear Tom,
As a computer programmer, I’m interested in computing technology. What type of supercomputers do you use for forecasting? Tom Wallquist, Mokena, Illinois
Dear Tom, The National Weather Service operates a meteorological supercomputing facility at Suitland, Mary-land, where Dr. Wayman Baker says computer models are run on a Cray C90. This is what is called a Class 7 supercomputera machine that can perform 16 billion mathematical computations per second. Baker says it takes the Cray C90 four hours and 64 million calcuations to make a 10-day global weather forecast. He said the procurement has begun on the next supercomputer (which runs 30 times faster), due on line in a year.Dr. Baker expects teraflop speed (trillions of calculations per second) supercomputers to be forecasting the weather in the U.S. by 2001 or 2002.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His weather forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN News at noon and 9 p.m.
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