The New York Times has a cool article on Meteorology. The article is chock-full of good information, from the education required to analyze weather and climate, challenges faced in forecasting, the supercomputers used in forecasting, and some statistics on the improvement of forecasting and especially warning systems. Meteorology requires a ghastly amount of computer power. An interesting comment, though I suspect some embellishment, stated the supercomputing center generates its own weather simply due to the heat the center generates.

Here is a link to the Nick Silver article [link].