Meet the Computer Scientist You Should Thank For Your Smartphone’s Weather App

Meet the Computer Scientist You Should Thank For Your Smartphone’s Weather App

"A weather app is a nifty tool that predicts your meteorological future, calculated with the strength of radar, algorithms and satellites around the world. Today, computerized weather predictionβ€”like moving pictures or flying by planeβ€”is so commonplace that smartphone-users don’t give it a second thought. But at mid-century, the idea that you might be able to forecast the weather days or even weeks ahead was a tantalizing prospect."

"One of the most important breakthroughs in weather forecasting took place in the spring of 1950, during an experiment at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. For over a month straight, a team of scientists and computer operators worked tirelessly to do something meteorologists had been working toward for nearly a century: predict the weather mathematically."