Was the forecast right for Denver on Sun Aug 2?
Denver, Colorado · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the ECMWF IFS analysis
8 days out, 5 models put Denver's Sun Aug 2 high anywhere from 93° to 105°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 102°. The day verified at 102° against the ECMWF IFS analysis — partly cloudy.
ECMWF landed closest, off by 0.1°. GEM ran 7° cool.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Sun Aug 2 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 Denver scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8d · 2026-07-25 | 93° | 95° | 100° | 97° | 105° | — | — | 93–105° |
| 7d · 2026-07-26 | 96° | 97° | 100° | 92° | 104° | — | — | 92–104° |
| 6d · 2026-07-27 | 98° | 96° | 99° | 97° | 105° | 98° | 100° | 96–105° |
| 5d · 2026-07-28 | 98° | 98° | 103° | 97° | 102° | 98° | 102° | 97–103° |
| 4d · 2026-07-29 | 99° | 98° | 102° | 95° | 100° | 101° | 102° | 95–102° |
| 3d · 2026-07-30 | 100° | 99° | 102° | 94° | 100° | 101° | 101° | 94–102° |
| 2d · 2026-07-31 | 100° | 99° | 102° | 95° | 102° | 102° | 102° | 95–102° |
| 1d · 2026-08-01 | 101° | 99° | 102° | 95° | 102° | 102° | 102° | 95–102° |
| actual | 102° |
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 Denver — 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.