No, I have no link to support that there are actual advancements in weather prediction. It's just an observation I've had over the last 10 years. In the 1940s and 50s, weather prediction was so bad that it was treated as a topic of humor, even by the media which produced it. Even into the 80s and 90s, that part of the news was the domain of a "weather girl." I started watching the weather closely when I got into sailing, and found that listening to marine weather was often useless as a safety precaution.
This started to change in the early 90s, and a friend pointed out improvements in weather forecasts by the US Coast Guard. Actually, I think it was NOAA, but the Coast Guard based reports on that. Today, I'm impressed by the accuracy of 7 day forecasts, which I think are more reliable than forecasts for "this afternoon" used to be.
I've moved about the country over my lifetime, so the accuracy of forecasting might be somewhat dependent on geography, but today, I'm actually impressed with how good it is compared to a time, not to long ago, when I used to wonder why they even bothered predicting the weather.
If I had to guess, it has everything to do with them having a better understanding of how the oceans work. If you don't understand the oceans, you don't understand weather.
I find the weather reports here to be lousy, but a lot of that is they focus almost entirely on the Denver metro area and don't give a fuck about the rest of the state. We got snow Friday night/Saturday morning and the friday night weather report never even bothered to show any of the state north of Longmont. It is typical to hear 10 minutes about Denver weather and then something like "and it will be slightly cooler along the northern foothills".
I've noticed more accurate forecasts, too. When there's a 70% chance of rain, it rains. And they're a lot better about predicting natural disasters. We don't get caught flat-footed by hurricanes anymore.
With global warming, there is an increasing change in both weather patterns and also things that affect it like ocean currents. Global warming may lead to desalinization of the ocean, which might stop the ocean currents, which are based on the salinity of the ocean. So predictions may become of dire importance. Satellite imagery and other advancements have all added to the ability to track weather. The ability to predict events like Frankenstorm will become vital.