DeepMind's hurricane AI model gives forecasters an extra day of warning and is being open-sourced as WeatherNext models, though researchers don't fully understand how it works.
<p>In October 2025, a storm brewed over the Caribbean Sea. Weather models differed on its trajectory. Would it remain weak and end up in Haiti, or would it intensify and head to Jamaica? Artificial intelligence model WeatherNext, developed by <a href="https://www.wired.com/tag/deepmind/">Google’s DeepMind</a> and Google Research, went with the latter. Five days before landfall, <a href="https://deepmind.google/blog/how-weathernext-helped-the-national-hurricane-center-better-predict-hurricane-melissas-historic-landfall-in-jamaica/">it predicted</a> with 80 percent confidence that the storm system would hit Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/hurricane-melissa-has-meteorologists-terrified/">Hurricane Melissa</a> was catastrophic, causing flooding and landslides across Jamaica. But the AI model helped forecasters give an earlier warning to communities in its path, so they could better prepare.</p>
<p>In a paper published on Thursday in Nature, researchers show that the <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/google-deepmind-ai-weather-forecast/">WeatherNext AI model</a> can predict cyclones with unprecedented accuracy. On average, it gives forecasters a day more lead time than existing models; this means its predictions three days out are as accurate as previous models’ predictions two days out. On the ground, that extra day can mean a lot.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/deepminds-hurricane-model-bought-forecasters-an-extra-day/">Read full article</a></p>
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# DeepMind’s hurricane breakthrough has surprised weather scientists
Source: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/deepminds-hurricane-model-bought-forecasters-an-extra-day/](https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/deepminds-hurricane-model-bought-forecasters-an-extra-day/)
The AI model must be picking up on something in the lower\-resolution data that allows it to make predictions about storm intensity, but the researchers don’t know what\. “It’s a black box at the end of the day, but that gives physicists a signal that something is happening that was not previously understood,” Alet says\.
The model doesn’t just spit out one prediction; it produces a range of potential scenarios for a developing storm\. This helps to capture any potential “butterfly effect,” says Alet, where a small deviation from a trend could lead to much bigger changes down the line\. Forecasters can use these outputs, alongside those of other models, to inform their predictions about how a storm system will likely unfold\. Last year, the AI model created 50 scenarios per storm; now, it generates 1,000\.
“That’s something that, with our computing power, we simply can’t do with our existing numerical models,” Musgrave says\.
Brennan says DeepMind’s model is a great new tool in forecasters’ toolbox but emphasizes that it’s one of many\. “There’s no guarantee that one model, because it did well last year or really did well for this particular storm, is necessarily going to be the best model for the next season or the next storm,” he says\. The human element, he adds, is still critical\. “A hurricane is not just a track or an intensity forecast,” he says\. “It requires experts to translate that into what the impacts are going to be—and it’s the impacts that kill people\.”
Google DeepMind also announced that it is open\-sourcing the WeatherNext models used during hurricane season so that researchers can use and improve on them\. Alet is hopeful that opening the models up to the research community could help uncover fresh insights into how cyclones work\.
“I’m very excited about scientific discovery,” he says\. “I think AI is giving us new tools to poke into the laws of the universe\.”
*This story originally appeared on[wired\.com](https://www.wired.com/story/deepmind-ai-model-can-predict-hurricanes-earlier/)\.*
DeepMind's WeatherNext AI model, published in Nature, can predict hurricanes with unprecedented accuracy, giving forecasters about a day more lead time than existing models.
Google DeepMind's WeatherNext AI model achieves state-of-the-art cyclone forecasting accuracy, providing an extra day of warning, and is now open-sourced.
Google DeepMind's WeatherNext AI model, published in Nature, achieves state-of-the-art accuracy in cyclone track and intensity forecasting, providing an average of 24 extra hours of preparation time.
Google DeepMind is open sourcing WeatherNext, an AI model that achieves state-of-the-art accuracy in cyclone forecasting, offering an extra day of warning and representing a decade of meteorological progress.
Google DeepMind releases WeatherNext 2, an advanced AI model that generates faster, higher-resolution global weather forecasts and hundreds of scenarios in under a minute using a single TPU.