Hurricane Lee wasn’t bothering anyone in early September, churning far out at sea somewhere between Africa and North America. A wall of high pressure stood in its westward path, poised to deflect the storm away from Florida and in a grand arc northeast. Heading where, exactly? It was 10 days out from the earliest possible landfall—eons in weather forecasting—but meteorologists at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, or ECMWF, were watching closely. The tiniest uncertainties could make the difference between a rainy day in Scotland or serious trouble for the US Northeast.
Typically, weather forecasters would rely on models of atmospheric physics to make that call. This time, they
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