Was the forecast right for Washington on Fri Jul 31?
Washington, District of Columbia · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the ECMWF IFS analysis
5 days out, 7 models put Washington's Fri Jul 31 high anywhere from 83° to 90°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 89°. The day verified at 90° against the ECMWF IFS analysis — cloudy.
GFS landed closest, off by 0.0°. GEM ran 5° warm.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Fri Jul 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 Washington scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5d · 2026-07-26 | 85° | 86° | 86° | 88° | 83° | 90° | 86° | 83–90° |
| 4d · 2026-07-27 | 88° | 86° | 86° | 89° | 88° | 85° | 86° | 85–89° |
| 3d · 2026-07-28 | 88° | 85° | 90° | 89° | 89° | 88° | 85° | 85–90° |
| 2d · 2026-07-29 | 90° | 87° | 90° | 90° | 90° | 89° | 85° | 85–90° |
| 1d · 2026-07-30 | 89° | 87° | 90° | 95° | 90° | 89° | 87° | 87–95° |
| 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 Washington — 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 ECMWF IFS analysis (temperature_2m_max). 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.