Was the forecast right for Houston on Mon Aug 31?
Houston, Texas · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the HOU observations
9 days out, 5 models put Houston's Mon Aug 31 high anywhere from 93° to 98°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 96°. The day verified at 90° against the HOU observations, with 0.39 in of precipitation — thunderstorms.
ECMWF landed closest, off by 4.3°. GFS ran 8° warm.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Mon Aug 31 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 Houston scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9d · 2026-08-22 | 93° | 98° | 93° | 94° | 98° | — | — | 93–98° |
| 8d · 2026-08-23 | 95° | 94° | 89° | 96° | 99° | — | — | 89–99° |
| 7d · 2026-08-24 | 96° | 96° | 92° | 93° | 97° | — | — | 92–97° |
| 6d · 2026-08-25 | 95° | 98° | 89° | 95° | 95° | 95° | 94° | 89–98° |
| 5d · 2026-08-26 | 96° | 96° | 94° | 90° | 91° | 92° | 93° | 90–96° |
| 4d · 2026-08-27 | 95° | 98° | 92° | 94° | 98° | 98° | 90° | 90–98° |
| 3d · 2026-08-28 | 96° | 98° | 98° | 97° | 97° | 98° | 93° | 93–98° |
| 2d · 2026-08-29 | 95° | 97° | 95° | 97° | 99° | 95° | 95° | 95–99° |
| 1d · 2026-08-30 | 94° | 96° | 94° | 96° | 98° | 95° | 98° | 94–98° |
| actual | 90° |
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 Houston — 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 HOU 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.