Was the forecast right for Washington on Sat Aug 29?
Washington, District of Columbia · daily high temperature in °F · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the DCA observations
10 days out, 4 models put Washington's Sat Aug 29 high anywhere from 79° to 88°;by the final call, the day before, the field had settled to a median of 84°. The day verified at 85° against the DCA observations — partly cloudy.
GFS landed closest, off by 0.1°. AIFS ran 3° cool.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Sat Aug 29 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10d · 2026-08-19 | 84° | 82° | 79° | — | 88° | — | — | 79–88° |
| 9d · 2026-08-20 | 77° | 84° | 81° | — | 90° | — | — | 77–90° |
| 8d · 2026-08-21 | 82° | 86° | 87° | 83° | 90° | — | — | 82–90° |
| 7d · 2026-08-22 | 83° | 81° | 88° | 87° | 94° | — | — | 81–94° |
| 6d · 2026-08-23 | 80° | 85° | 88° | 86° | 93° | 84° | 87° | 80–93° |
| 5d · 2026-08-24 | 85° | 82° | 86° | 83° | 82° | 84° | 81° | 81–86° |
| 4d · 2026-08-25 | 84° | 84° | 83° | 82° | 83° | 82° | 88° | 82–88° |
| 3d · 2026-08-26 | 85° | 84° | 88° | 89° | 87° | 87° | 83° | 83–89° |
| 2d · 2026-08-27 | 83° | 82° | 83° | 84° | 86° | 86° | 86° | 82–86° |
| 1d · 2026-08-28 | 82° | 82° | 83° | 85° | 85° | 85° | 84° | 82–85° |
| actual | 85° |
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 DCA 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.