The Spread

Was the forecast right for Salt Lake City on Tue Jul 21?

Salt Lake City, Utah · daily high temperature · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against ERA5

4 days out, 7 models put Salt Lake City's Tue Jul 21 high anywhere from 89° to 98°; by the final call the field had settled to a median of 97°. ERA5 says the day verified at 99° with 0.01 in of precipitation — drizzle.

GFS landed closest, off by 0.1°. AIGFS ran 6° cold.

4 days out the models said 89–98; it hit 99. GFS led (off 0.1°); AIGFS ran 6° 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 Tue Jul 21 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 Salt Lake City scoreboard shows them, labelled.

Lead AIFSAIGFSECMWFGEMGFSICONUKMO Range
4d · 2026-07-17 89° 92° 96° 92° 98° 94° 96° 89–98°
3d · 2026-07-18 90° 93° 97° 98° 98° 92° 99° 90–99°
2d · 2026-07-19 92° 94° 96° 90° 97° 91° 98° 90–98°
1d · 2026-07-20 93° 94° 98° 96° 98° 97° 99° 93–99°
0d · 2026-07-21 95° 93° 100° 97° 99° 96° 98° 93–100°
actual 99°

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 Salt Lake City — 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 ERA5 reanalysis (temperature_2m_max). Archive depth varies by city; receipts exist only for dates the archive watched arrive.