Which weather model is most accurate in your city?
The Spread — the forecast spread — archives what every major model predicted, then scores those forecasts against what actually happened. The honest headline, most days and most places: it's close. Where nobody leads by more than the noise, this page says so and shows the whole field — a crown won by a tenth of a degree is a coin flip wearing a ribbon. Pick a city:
| City | The race | Verdict | Spread today |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta, Georgia | ECMWF & UKMO within 0.04°F | 4°F | |
| Berlin, State of Berlin | ICON & ECMWF within 0.03°F | 3°F | |
| Boston, Massachusetts | UKMO & ICON within 0.08°F | 6°F | |
| Buffalo, New York | UKMO & ICON within 0.24°F | 12°F | |
| Charlotte, North Carolina | AIGFS & GEM within 0.27°F | 8°F | |
| Chicago, Illinois | ICON & GFS within 0.3°F | 7°F | |
| Dallas, Texas | AIFS & AIGFS within 0.03°F | 3°F | |
| Denver, Colorado | UKMO & GFS within 0.13°F | 5°F | |
| Detroit, Michigan | UKMO by 0.42°F over GFS | 8°F | |
| Houston, Texas | GEM & ICON within 0.05°F | 3°F | |
| London, England | ICON & ECMWF within 0.16°F | 4°F | |
| Los Angeles, California | UKMO & ECMWF within 0.02°F | 11°F | |
| Miami, Florida | UKMO & ICON within 0.05°F | 8°F | |
| Milan, Lombardy | ICON by 0.54°F over AIGFS | 3°F | |
| Minneapolis, Minnesota | AIFS & ECMWF within 0.24°F | 17°F | |
| New Orleans, Louisiana | ICON by 0.43°F over ECMWF | 8°F | |
| New York, New York | AIFS by 0.86°F over ICON | 6°F | |
| Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | ICON & ECMWF within 0.05°F | 6°F | |
| Orlando, Florida | AIGFS by 0.66°F over UKMO | 13°F | |
| Paris, Île-de-France Region | ICON & AIGFS within 0.13°F | 3°F | |
| Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | UKMO & AIFS within 0.04°F | 2°F | |
| Phoenix, Arizona | ECMWF by 0.55°F over ICON | 12°F | |
| Salt Lake City, Utah | ICON & GFS within 0.29°F | 13°F | |
| San Antonio, Texas | ECMWF & UKMO within 0.06°F | 3°F | |
| San Diego, California | GFS & ICON within 0.14°F | 9°F | |
| San Francisco, California | ECMWF by 0.53°F over GEM | 5°F | |
| Seattle, Washington | UKMO & ECMWF within 0.07°F | 7°F | |
| St. Louis, Missouri | ICON & ECMWF within 0.24°F | 6°F | |
| Tampa, Florida | AIGFS by 0.43°F over AIFS | 7°F | |
| Washington, District of Columbia | UKMO & GEM within 0.34°F | 6°F |
What one scored day looks like
The most recent day we settled, whichever way it went — not the one that flatters the models.
9 days out, 5 models put Oklahoma City's Fri Aug 28 high anywhere from 88° to 114°; by the final call they had settled to a median of 99°. It hit 100° — UKMO landed closest, off 0.3°.
- 9d
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83° 114°
100° actual
Each bar is the full range of the models still forecasting that day, in °F; the rule is what the OKC observations recorded. This one opened 26° wide and closed to 4°. Across every day we have scored, the range narrows even though more models arrive as the day approaches — a median 11.6° at 13 days out with four models, 5.8° on the day with seven. See this day's full receipt →
More scored days
The next-most-recent settled days across the archive — records, not rankings: each bar is the models' opening range, the rule is what happened.
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Washington · Fri Aug 28
5 models opened 85–90° at 8 days out; it hit 90° — GFS closest, off 0.1°.
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Tampa · Fri Aug 28
7 models opened 84–94° at 3 days out; it hit 89° — UKMO closest, off 0.4°.
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St. Louis · Fri Aug 28
7 models opened 83–86° at 3 days out; it hit 87° — GFS closest, off 0.4°.
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Seattle · Fri Aug 28
7 models opened 69–77° at 5 days out; it hit 73° — GEM closest, off 0.1°.
How the scoring works
Each model's 1-, 3-, and 7-day-ahead forecasts are captured from its actual archived runs (nothing is reconstructed after the fact), then verified against each city's truth — its own station's observations where one is pinned, the ECMWF IFS analysis otherwise — once the day has happened. Bias is the signed average error — positive means the model ran warm. The typical miss (MAE) is the average absolute error. Cities join these pages as they join The Spread's archive.
Two things you should know about the yardstick. Where a city is pinned to its own station, models are verified against that thermometer's observed highs outright, and the city page names the station. Everywhere else, truth is the ECMWF IFS analysis — ECMWF's operational product, a grid rather than a thermometer, while two of the seven models scored here are ECMWF's own. Every registry city has been pinned to its station since 2026-08-22, so the grid is the yardstick only for places no thermometer serves, and those pages say so.
The Spread itself is in closed beta — these verification pages and the Updates log are public while the rest of the product is gated. If you want in, ask for an invite — say where you forecast and I will send you one.