Was the forecast right for Washington on Sun Aug 2?
Washington, District of Columbia · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the ECMWF IFS analysis
7 days out, 5 models put Washington's Sun Aug 2 high anywhere from 76° to 87°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 84°. The day verified at 82° against the ECMWF IFS analysis, with 0.6 in of precipitation — rain.
AIFS landed closest, off by 1.3°. GEM ran 9° warm.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Sun Aug 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 Washington scoreboard shows them, labelled.
| Lead | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7d · 2026-07-26 | 84° | 84° | 86° | 87° | 76° | — | — | 76–87° |
| 6d · 2026-07-27 | 83° | 78° | 91° | 77° | 76° | 86° | 90° | 76–91° |
| 5d · 2026-07-28 | 83° | 84° | 91° | 82° | 84° | 87° | 89° | 82–91° |
| 4d · 2026-07-29 | 80° | 81° | 88° | 79° | 80° | 86° | 90° | 79–90° |
| 3d · 2026-07-30 | 88° | 84° | 93° | 89° | 83° | 90° | 90° | 83–93° |
| 2d · 2026-07-31 | 82° | 84° | 87° | 89° | 87° | 85° | 88° | 82–89° |
| 1d · 2026-08-01 | 84° | 80° | 81° | 91° | 91° | 87° | 80° | 80–91° |
| actual | 82° |
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.