It was far too small a victory to count as an equaliser. But cheers were still heard in American meteorological circles after the storm that hit the country's east coast last month left the city of New York mostly unscathed. For more than two decades the Global Forecast System (gfs), the leading weather-prediction model produced in the United States, has been notably less accurate than its chief competitor, published by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ecmwf). Although this deficit went largely unnoticed for years, it was laid bare by Hurricane Sandy. A week before that storm's landfall in 2012, the ecmwf predicted it would veer towards the coast while the gfs showed it remaining at sea.
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