Michael Fish it isn’t... Met Office’s £1.2bn forecast supercomputer

THE only predictable thing about the British weather appears to be its unpredictability.

Now the Met Office is hoping to improve its chances of getting forecasts correct with a supercomputer worth £1.2billion.

The new microprocessor – built by Microsoft – will be twice as powerful as any other in the UK, and rank among the top 25 fastest in the world.

The Met Office has often come in for stick when its predictions have gone awry.

The most famous example was when BBC weatherman Michael Fish assured a viewer that a hurricane was definitely not on its way – the day before the Great Storm of 1987 devastated southern England. The Met Office said the new machine, which will start crunching numbers in the summer next year, will also have unprecedented ability to model local conditions. It will also be useful to simulate the effects of global warming and extreme weather.

Penny Endersby, chief executive of the Met Office, said yesterday that the computer would provide ‘ever more accurate forecasts that enable decisions to allow people to stay safe and thrive’.