I talked to a (very) senior scientist at the World Meteorological Organization not too long ago. He was of the opinion that the U.S. weather models were about 5

I talked to a (very) senior scientist at the World Meteorological Organization not too long ago. He was of the opinion that the U.S. weather models were about 5 to 10 years behind on the European models, and that this was caused by structural underfunding over longer periods of time (i.e. past decades). As I understood it these weather models are basically humongous software programs that are developed in house, but based on publicly available science and fed by data from weather stations. Does your software become better if you run it on a faster computer? It will certainly help, but he instilled on me the impression that the US had a bit more catching up to do than just buying a new supercomputer.