When you check the forecast, Exeter worked it out
- The Met Office since 2003
- A 140-tonne supercomputer
- 16,000 trillion calculations a second
- Billions in avoided damage
How Exeter grew
The short version, in order. Pick a year.
The Met Office moves to Exeter
And with it one of the largest computing operations in the country.
The Met Office, and one of Britain’s largest computations
The Met Office moved its headquarters to Exeter in 2003, and with it came one of the largest computing operations in the country. Its Cray supercomputer weighed 140 tonnes and ran more than sixteen thousand trillion calculations a second, producing UK-wide forecasts at 1.5km resolution every hour.
Forecasting is one of the oldest big-data problems there is: take millions of observations, run them through a model of the atmosphere, and be right about tomorrow. The Met Office reckons the benefit to the country runs to billions a year in damage avoided.
The work has since moved to cloud supercomputing, but the point stands. When you check whether it will rain, something in Exeter worked it out.
What that means if you trade in Exeter
Exeter is the commercial capital of a very large and thinly populated region, so its businesses routinely serve customers an hour away who have no closer alternative.
It is also a university city with a substantial professional sector, which makes for a customer base that reads carefully and expects to be told the price.
What Exeter businesses ask us for
State your radius
Devon is big. How far you travel is the first thing a rural customer needs to know.
Seasonal or steady
Tourist trade and year-round trade need different pages. Choose the one that pays.
Publish fees
A professional, university-town market expects it and rewards it.
How well do you know Exeter?
Five quick questions. Get all five right and you win a 10% off discount code for your website. Every answer is somewhere on this page, so have a read if you get stuck.
Exeter quiz · 1 of 5
What moved to Exeter in 2003?
Common questions
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