% of religious and smart people vis a vis Hurricane Katrina?

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it [finding a method to stop hurricanes] requires among other things an intimate knowledge of partial differential equations

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Is this a joke?

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No. Modelling fluid and gas flow is largely partial differential equations.

The weather forecasts you get on TV are the outcomes of solving partial differential equations using super computers in America and Japan. Raw data (comprising pressure, temperature, humidity, etc) is sampled at various altititudes and locations around the planet, gathered by devices such as weather balloons. This data is then plugged into the equations and the partial differential equations are solved using numerical formulas, which involves an obscene amount of number crunching.