The Spread

Was the forecast right for San Francisco on Sat Aug 1?

San Francisco, California · daily high temperature · forecasts from each model's archived runs, verified against ERA5

5 days out, 7 models put San Francisco's Sat Aug 1 high anywhere from 66° to 81°; by the final call the field had settled to a median of 76°. ERA5 says the day verified at 71° — partly cloudy.

ECMWF landed closest, off by 1.3°. AIGFS ran 10° hot.

5 days out the models said 66–81; it hit 71. ECMWF led (off 1.3°); AIGFS ran 10° hot.
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 Sat Aug 1 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 San Francisco scoreboard shows them, labelled.

Lead AIFSAIGFSECMWFGEMGFSICONUKMO Range
5d · 2026-07-27 75° 81° 70° 66° 72° 66° 74° 66–81°
4d · 2026-07-28 76° 78° 70° 68° 73° 68° 77° 68–78°
3d · 2026-07-29 78° 78° 70° 68° 75° 68° 78° 68–78°
2d · 2026-07-30 76° 77° 71° 70° 71° 66° 76° 66–77°
1d · 2026-07-31 77° 80° 70° 68° 77° 67° 77° 67–80°
0d · 2026-08-01 76° 81° 69° 68° 81° 67° 76° 67–81°
actual 71°

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 San Francisco — 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.