I talked to a (very) senior scientist at the World Meteorological Organization not too long ago. He was of the opinion that the U.S. weather models were about 5 to 10 years behind on the European models, and that this was caused by structural underfunding over longer periods of time (i.e. past decades). As I understood it these weather models are basically humongous software programs that are developed in house, but based on publicly available science and fed by data from weather stations.<p>Does your software become better if you run it on a faster computer? It will certainly help, but he instilled on me the impression that the US had a bit more catching up to do than just buying a new supercomputer.