Was the forecast right for Chicago on Thu Jul 30?
Chicago, Illinois · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the ECMWF IFS analysis
4 days out, 7 models put Chicago's Thu Jul 30 high anywhere from 80° to 88°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 83°. The day verified at 84° against the ECMWF IFS analysis — cloudy.
AIFS landed closest, off by 1.5°. GFS ran 8° cool.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Thu Jul 30 as each model's runs approached it — the last archived run per day. NBM and The Spread's own blend are consensus products and stay out of these ranges and rankings; the Chicago scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4d · 2026-07-26 | 80° | 83° | 83° | 83° | 88° | 84° | 84° | 80–88° |
| 3d · 2026-07-27 | 80° | 85° | 89° | 77° | 89° | 86° | 84° | 77–89° |
| 2d · 2026-07-28 | 82° | 82° | 83° | 83° | 83° | 88° | 87° | 82–88° |
| 1d · 2026-07-29 | 83° | 82° | 87° | 83° | 76° | 87° | 86° | 76–87° |
| actual | 84° |
Read it honestly
This is one date, not a league table. A model can win a day it deserved to lose; rankings only mean something over a window. For that, see which model has been most accurate in Chicago — or every city The Spread scores.
Forecasts are what each model's archived runs said at the time, captured at The Spread's sweep times — never reconstructed after the fact. Truth is the ECMWF IFS analysis (temperature_2m_max). The actual values are the ones in hand when this receipt was settled, usually 2 days after the date; a correction published after that is not carried into it. Archive depth varies by city; receipts exist only for dates the archive watched arrive.