Was the forecast right for Detroit on Thu Sep 3?
Detroit, Michigan · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the DTW observations
9 days out, 5 models put Detroit's Thu Sep 3 high anywhere from 80° to 93°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 90°. The day verified at 88° against the DTW observations, with 0.79 in of precipitation — thunderstorms.
ICON landed closest, off by 1.8°. GFS ran 8° warm.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Thu Sep 3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9d · 2026-08-25 | 81° | 80° | 84° | 89° | 93° | — | — | 80–93° |
| 8d · 2026-08-26 | 82° | 84° | 85° | 86° | 89° | — | — | 82–89° |
| 7d · 2026-08-27 | 83° | 82° | 78° | 79° | 99° | — | — | 78–99° |
| 6d · 2026-08-28 | 80° | 81° | 81° | 76° | 88° | 88° | 83° | 76–88° |
| 5d · 2026-08-29 | 85° | 83° | 89° | 95° | 92° | 90° | 85° | 83–95° |
| 4d · 2026-08-30 | 82° | 83° | 83° | 88° | 90° | 90° | 95° | 82–95° |
| 3d · 2026-08-31 | 84° | 85° | 82° | 90° | 99° | 90° | 84° | 82–99° |
| 2d · 2026-09-01 | 82° | 85° | 84° | 87° | 95° | 88° | 88° | 82–95° |
| 1d · 2026-09-02 | 82° | 86° | 86° | 90° | 96° | 90° | 92° | 82–96° |
| actual | 88° |
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.