Was the forecast right for Denver on Sun Aug 30?
Denver, Colorado · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the DEN observations
6 days out, 7 models put Denver's Sun Aug 30 high anywhere from 80° to 90°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 86°. The day verified at 85° against the DEN observations — drizzle.
GFS landed closest, off by 1.0°. UKMO ran 5° warm.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Sun Aug 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 Denver scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6d · 2026-08-24 | 80° | 82° | 90° | 87° | 85° | 83° | 90° | 80–90° |
| 5d · 2026-08-25 | 84° | 83° | 86° | 92° | 85° | 80° | 93° | 80–93° |
| 4d · 2026-08-26 | 85° | 86° | 88° | 91° | 82° | 86° | 89° | 82–91° |
| 3d · 2026-08-27 | 85° | 84° | 91° | 90° | 84° | 89° | 89° | 84–91° |
| 2d · 2026-08-28 | 84° | 85° | 86° | 90° | 86° | 88° | 89° | 84–90° |
| 1d · 2026-08-29 | 84° | 84° | 90° | 89° | 84° | 86° | 90° | 84–90° |
| actual | 85° |
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 DEN observations. 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.