In this book, he envisaged the forecast room of the future as a spherical building so as to simulate the earth, a bit like the Albert Hall, full of people with hand calculators and slide rules all doing sums at the same time. Conceptually, this is the super-computer of today. After WW2, when electronic computing became a reality, Richardson's ideas were dusted off. Ever since then, meteorologists have been keeping ahead of the computer designers by specifying needs for greater and greater computing power and speed. The latest, massively parallel processors used by weather services are fulfilling Richardson's dream.
Forecasts go wrong for two main reasons.
First, the mathematical equations do not describe all the physical processes accurately enough. Secondly, there can be gaps in the observational data that affect adversely the forecasts. Whether the resultant errors are going to be serious or not is a problem that is being studied by the scientists. Much depends on the continued increase in computing power and the ability of the meteorologists to use them. Increasing power can help to increase the resolution of the numerical models and, thus, the description of small scale effects such as headlands and sea breezes on the wind.