Artificial intelligence is showing promise when it comes to weather forecasting, but it still couldn’t predict the Texas floods. The best-performing weather models during the July 4 floods were traditional ones specially designed to produce local forecasts at high resolution. Global-scale models were far less accurate — and so were AI models, weather experts say. “All those new fancy AI models? They missed it too,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources, in a live YouTube talk on July 7. Some meteorologists say that could change. AI weather models are starting to exhibit an ability for deep learning of atmospheric physics, which means they could be capable of forecasting unprecedented weather events based on atmospheric conditions.

Other weather forecasting news:

• Forbes: Blog: Let’s talk about AI and weather forecasting
• University of Colorado, Boulder: Blog: Why flood prediction in the US falls short and how researchers are working to fix it
• The Conversation: Blog: The anatomy of a flash flood – Why the Texas flood was so deadly