NASA's Hurricane Model Resolution Increases Nearly 10-Fold Since Katrina

zdburke writes: Thanks to improvements in satellites and on-the-ground computing power, NASA's ability to model hurricane data has come a long way in the ten years since Katrina devastated New Orleans. Their blog notes, "Today's models have up to ten times the resolution than those during Hurricane Katrina and allow for a more accurate look inside the hurricane. Imagine going from video game figures made of large chunky blocks to detailed human characters that visibly show beads of sweat on their forehead." Gizmodo covered the post too and added some technical details, noting that, "the supercomputer has more than 45,000 processor cores and runs at 1.995 petfalops."

Comments

Re:Still wouldn't have made Ray Nagin competent

[cusco]

The school buses didn't belong to the school district, much less the city. These free-market idiots who believe in privatizing everything to make it more expensive and less efficient had ensured that there were no school buses available to move people. Nagin was an idiot, but that was one failure that can't be laid at his feet.

More disturbing to me was that Cuba had sent a ship full of doctors and Venezuela had sent a tanker full of fuel for hospital generators, and both were turned back by the Navy. Most of the hospitals stayed staffed by nurses and candy stripers (the doctors could afford to evacuate) until the All Clear, and the generators ran out of fuel until Halliburton trucks could get to them (even domestic trucks of donated fuel were turned back because only authorized vendors selling at elevated prices were allowed in).