I do find it extraordinary that the USA, who pretty much invented computers and supercomputers and owns most of the worlds supercomputing resources, can be falling behind in numerical weather prediction.
See supercomputer top 500 site:
http://www.top500.org/list/2011/11/100
I thought the accuracy of forecasting was about 70-80% at 3 days, and therefore beyond 3 days isn’t worth using for much.