The Spread

Was the forecast right for Detroit on Wed Sep 2?

Detroit, Michigan · daily high temperature in °C · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the DTW observations

8 days out, 5 models put Detroit's Wed Sep 2 high anywhere from 24° to 33°; by the final call the field had settled to a median of 33°. The day verified at 36° against the DTW observations, with 0.5 mm of precipitation — thunderstorms.

GFS landed closest, off by 0.1°. ECMWF ran 5° cold.

8 days out the models said 24–33; it hit 36. GFS led (off 0.1°C); ECMWF ran 5°C cold.
The shareable card for this receipt — what this page looks like pasted into a thread.

What every model said, at every lead

Daily-high calls for Wed Sep 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 Detroit scoreboard shows them, labelled.

Lead AIFSAIGFSECMWFGEMGFSICONUKMO Range
8d · 2026-08-25 28° 24° 27° 33° 28° 24–33°
7d · 2026-08-26 25° 29° 32° 25° 36° 25–36°
6d · 2026-08-27 28° 28° 28° 31° 34° 30° 28–34°
5d · 2026-08-28 30° 34° 36° 33° 39° 32° 30° 30–39°
4d · 2026-08-29 31° 33° 37° 36° 38° 36° 34° 31–38°
3d · 2026-08-30 33° 33° 34° 34° 37° 36° 34° 33–37°
2d · 2026-08-31 32° 33° 33° 34° 37° 35° 34° 32–37°
1d · 2026-09-01 32° 34° 33° 36° 36° 35° 34° 32–36°
0d · 2026-09-02 31° 33° 31° 35° 35° 33° 34° 31–35°
actual 36°

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. Archive depth varies by city; receipts exist only for dates the archive watched arrive.