How far out do you expect an accurate weather forecast to get in your lifetime?

Between the flooding rains and tropical threat of late, the weather has been on the minds of many. The two things that tend to hinder forecasters the most are A) accurate, detailed, and widespread current observations and B) computing power.

It may seem outrageous today, but if you could initialize a model with the exact conditions across the entire globe, you could theoretically predict the weather as far out as you'd like. It is all governed by the laws of nature, so if you know exactly how things are right now, you can determine exactly how they'll progress. In a practical sense, there are outside and relatively unpredictable events that will change things, such as solar dynamics, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc., but getting an accurate prediction 2-3 weeks out is plausible if you can get the current observations and the computing power to handle it.

Even if you break it down to smaller scale events like tornado outbreaks, I think we'll eventually see accurate, 3+ hour advanced notice of future tornado tracks with a mile or two margin of error in the next 25-30 years. It goes back to needing the exact environmental conditions across the relevant area, but once you have that, realistically forecasting a storm and impending tornado is just a matter of crunching the numbers.