Hi Mary. 'Nature Debates" covered this very topic a couple of years ago.

"Aside from the word 'prediction', forecasts of the evolution of large-scale weather systems have almost nothing in common with predicting the occurrence of large earthquakes. A better analogy from fluid mechanics is turbulence, a field in which quantitative prediction has proved to be as difficult as earthquake prediction."

The reason being is that they can't see the turbulence. They can see what it does, but not the turbulence itself.

The worse turbulence there is "clear weather turbulence." When you get into an area of "clear weather turbulence" many a pilot will tell you that it will scare the you know what out of you. It's even worse when the aircraft is near the ground, because they have virtually no chance of recovery before crashing.

Weather forecasters will tell you that the accuracy of weather forecasting is about 70%. They will also tell you that another $10 million can be spent on improving it, but that the improvement will only be around 3%. This figure was quoted about 20 years ago so it may have improved somewhat by now.

Most meteorologist and seismologist will tell you that it's a lot easier to predict something you can see then something you can't see. This doesn't mean that research into being able to predict earthquakes should be discontinued altogether. It just means that you build a little bit better and prepare for the next major quake. Even if earthquake prediction does become reality there may not be sufficient time to get out of the way. There may also be some that can't. Take Care…Don in creepy town

• Nature Debate