http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/the-weatherman-is-not-a-moron.html?hp

The one area in which our predictions are making extraordinary
progress, however, is perhaps the most unlikely field.

Perhaps the most impressive gains have been in hurricane forecasting. Just 25
years ago, when the National Hurricane Center tried to predict where a hurricane
would hit three days in advance of landfall, it missed by an average of 350
miles. If Hurricane Isaac, which made its unpredictable path through the Gulf of
Mexico last month, had occurred in the late 1980s, the center might have
projected landfall anywhere from Houston to Tallahassee, canceling untold
thousands of business deals, flights and picnics in between — and damaging its
reputation when the hurricane zeroed in hundreds of miles away. Now the average
miss is only about 100 miles.