The Spread

Was the forecast right for Philadelphia on Sun Aug 30?

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · daily high temperature in °C · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against the PHL observations

5 days out, 7 models put Philadelphia's Sun Aug 30 high anywhere from 28° to 31°; by the final call the field had settled to a median of 29°. The day verified at 31° against the PHL observations, with 0.3 mm of precipitation — drizzle.

ECMWF landed closest, off by 0.8°. AIGFS ran 2° cold.

5 days out the models said 28–31; it hit 31. ECMWF led (off 0.8°C); AIGFS ran 2°C cold.
The shareable card for this receipt — what this page looks like pasted into a thread.

What every model said, at every lead

Daily-high calls for Sun Aug 30 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 Philadelphia scoreboard shows them, labelled.

Lead AIFSAIGFSECMWFGEMGFSICONUKMO Range
5d · 2026-08-25 30° 30° 29° 28° 31° 30° 30° 28–31°
4d · 2026-08-26 30° 29° 31° 30° 31° 30° 32° 29–32°
3d · 2026-08-27 30° 30° 30° 31° 32° 30° 30° 30–32°
2d · 2026-08-28 29° 30° 30° 30° 33° 31° 30° 29–33°
1d · 2026-08-29 29° 29° 29° 30° 32° 31° 29° 29–32°
0d · 2026-08-30 29° 29° 30° 29° 29° 30° 29° 29–30°
actual 31°

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 Philadelphia — 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 PHL observations. Archive depth varies by city; receipts exist only for dates the archive watched arrive.