Was the forecast right for Salt Lake City on Wed Jul 22?
Salt Lake City, Utah · daily high temperature · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against ERA5
5 days out, 7 models put Salt Lake City's Wed Jul 22 high anywhere from 80° to 98°; by the final call the field had settled to a median of 87°. ERA5 says the day verified at 87° with 0.15 in of precipitation — drizzle.
ECMWF landed closest, off by 0.2°. AIFS ran 5° cold.
What every model said, at every lead
Daily-high calls for Wed Jul 22 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 | AIFS | AIGFS | ECMWF | GEM | GFS | ICON | UKMO | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5d · 2026-07-17 | 82° | 86° | 92° | 86° | 92° | 80° | 98° | 80–98° |
| 4d · 2026-07-18 | 83° | 87° | 93° | 83° | 94° | 83° | 94° | 83–94° |
| 3d · 2026-07-19 | 84° | 90° | 92° | 90° | 92° | 81° | 90° | 81–92° |
| 2d · 2026-07-20 | 84° | 86° | 93° | 92° | 92° | 84° | 94° | 84–94° |
| 1d · 2026-07-21 | 85° | 84° | 92° | 93° | 91° | 84° | 93° | 84–93° |
| 0d · 2026-07-22 | 83° | 87° | 87° | 87° | 90° | 88° | 86° | 83–90° |
| actual | 87° |
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.