I've noticed that Fortran comes up a lot when talking to people who do fluid dynamics simulations.
Curiously, it often does so in context of Python. One specific example I can remember was a library written in Fortran, with unit tests written in Python.
Fortran and Python go together very well (they complement each other in just the right ways and there's all the bindings / data structure compatibility with Numpy that you need). Glue code / UI in Python, Numerics in Numpy + homegrown Fortran, that's how I'd implement a numerical model from scratch today.
Just out of curiosity, what do you use for calling Fortran from Python (e.g. f2py, ctypes)? Do you have any suggestion about how to combine them together (e.g., for parallel calculations)?
I have a friend who writes modern fortran nearly everyday as an actuarial pension analyst in Manhattan. They hired him out of college having never written a "hello world" script. Hope that helps!