Was the forecast right for Detroit on Sun Aug 30?
Detroit, Michigan · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the DTW observations
5 days out, 7 models put Detroit's Sun Aug 30 high anywhere from 83° to 91°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 78°. The day verified at 76° against the DTW observations, with 0.25 in of precipitation — showers.
ICON landed closest, off by 0.2°. ECMWF ran 10° 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 Detroit scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5d · 2026-08-25 | 84° | 83° | 91° | 84° | 90° | 86° | 86° | 83–91° |
| 4d · 2026-08-26 | 84° | 80° | 88° | 81° | 85° | 87° | 85° | 80–88° |
| 3d · 2026-08-27 | 80° | 84° | 89° | 83° | 88° | 88° | 87° | 80–89° |
| 2d · 2026-08-28 | 75° | 82° | 85° | 84° | 86° | 84° | 87° | 75–87° |
| 1d · 2026-08-29 | 74° | 77° | 86° | 78° | 83° | 76° | 81° | 74–86° |
| actual | 76° |
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 Detroit — 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 DTW 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.