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Where the models disagree today

Saturday's widest spread is in Seattle, where seven models put the high anywhere from 47° to 56° in two camps; every city's spread is on the map, and the day's written read follows it.

How this page is built

Every number here is computed from The Spread's own archive of what each model actually published, run by run. The written discussion narrates those numbers and is not allowed to add any — no fronts, no systems, no forecast. It describes what the models are doing, which is what this archive measures.

Sample is 26 archived US cities, so "everywhere" means those cities. The map draws markers only: interpolating between them would show a pattern nobody measured.

26 archived cities · daily high temperature · day 3 (2026-10-24) · guidance as of 2026-10-21T01:50Z

Where they're fighting

One marker per archived city, labelled with its coolest and warmest model forecast for day 3; bigger and deeper in colour is a wider spread, and a dashed ring means three or more camps.

Reading the map

Each marker is one archived city, placed geographically. The label gives the coolest and warmest model forecast for day 3 — so a wide pair is a city the models disagree about — and marker size and colour are the spread between them. The coastline, lakes and state lines are there to place them; no value is drawn between the cities, because we know these 26 points and not the country between them.

A dashed ring means the models fractured into three or more distinct camps there — not just a wide range, but several competing answers at once. Most cities carry two camps at this lead; these are the ones telling more stories than that.

On a phone the map is drawn at the screen's width and names only the five widest; the list under it has every city.

Seattle 47–56° Seattle Minneapolis 67–75° Minneapolis Boston 53–60° Buffalo 56–62° New York 57–62° Chicago 66–72° Philadelphia 57–65° Philadelphia San Francisco 65–73° San Francisco Washington 60–64° Denver 55–62° St. Louis 71–75° Los Angeles 72–78° Charlotte 62–67° Oklahoma City 76–79° San Diego 72–78° Phoenix 73–80° Phoenix Atlanta 65–71° Dallas 81–83° New Orleans 72–77° Houston 82–85° San Antonio 80–85° Orlando 78–84° Tampa 80–84° Miami 80–83°

The widest spreads

Moved since yesterday: Denver, San Diego

  1. Seattle47–56°9° spreadtwo camps
  2. Minneapolis67–75°8° spreadtwo camps
  3. San Francisco65–73°8° spreadtwo camps
  4. Philadelphia57–65°8° spreadtwo camps
  5. Phoenix73–80°7° spread
  6. Denver55–62°7° spreadmedian moved 61° → 57° since yesterday
  7. Boston53–60°7° spread
  8. Detroit60–66°6° spread
All 26 cities
  1. Buffalo56–62°6° spread
  2. Salt Lake City51–57°6° spread
  3. Atlanta65–71°6° spread
  4. Orlando78–84°6° spread
  5. Chicago66–72°6° spread
  6. Los Angeles72–78°6° spread
  7. San Diego72–78°6° spreadmedian moved 78° → 75° since yesterday
  8. New York57–62°5° spread
  9. Charlotte62–67°5° spread
  10. New Orleans72–77°5° spread
  11. San Antonio80–85°5° spread
  12. St. Louis71–75°4° spreadtwo camps
  13. Tampa80–84°4° spread
  14. Washington60–64°4° spread
  15. Houston82–85°3° spread
  16. Miami80–83°3° spreadtwo camps
  17. Oklahoma City76–79°3° spread
  18. Dallas81–83°2° spread

These are day 3. For today's spread in each of these cities, see every location we archive.

Today's discussion

Seattle is where the models disagree most about Saturday. Their forecast highs run from 47 to 56 and split into two groups, so confidence there is low. The Canadian GEM model is at the cool end with 48 and the American GFS model at the warm end with 56. GEM's cooler number appears tied to where it draws a disturbance high up, about 340 miles west-northwest of Seattle near Port Hardy, British Columbia, moving southeast at 25 mph. It also has an area of low pressure, 1001 hPa, about 320 miles west-northwest near Tofino. GFS has neither. Separately, on the national maps the models disagree most higher up in the atmosphere about 100 miles southwest of Port Hardy.

Across the 26 cities, Saturday otherwise looks fairly settled. Minneapolis runs 67 to 75 and San Francisco 65 to 73, each split into two groups. In Minneapolis, the European ECMWF model's 72 appears to go with the area of high pressure it puts near Glasgow, Montana, which GFS does not draw. In San Francisco, GEM's coolest-of-all 65 looks tied to a high it alone places near Ontario, Oregon. Philadelphia ranges from 57 to 65. Agreement is tightest in Dallas, at 81 to 83, and Oklahoma City, at 76 to 78, so confidence there is high.

Over the past day, the middle forecast for Saturday dropped 3.6 degrees in Denver, to 57, and 3.3 in San Diego, to 75. The way the models grouped shifted together in Minneapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo. All told, 83 changes fired across 23 cities.

On rain, at least one model puts a tenth of an inch or more over a third of the map in the 24 hours to midday Saturday. All of them agree on only 11 percent, so the models are unsure where it rains at all.

A week out, the gaps widen sharply. Oklahoma City runs 52 to 82 and Dallas 60 to 85, so confidence that far ahead is low.

Issued 2026-10-21T00:53Z from 26 cities' archived model runs. Written from the numbers on this page — no forecast of its own.

Maps that draw every model

Unique maps which illustrate the spread: each one draws multiple models at once. All 25 maps

Which models run warm

How far each model's highs sit from the median of all of them, averaged over every archived city and lead; positive runs warm. This is not accuracy: the median can be wrong too. Warm and Cool count model-days at least 3° off the median, out of 52 to 78 each. Consensus products are left out — they are averages of the rows below, not competitors.

Modelvs median WarmCool Model-days
GFS +0.85° 18 9 78
AIGFS +0.63° 8 3 78
ICON +0.47° 5 1 52
GEM +0.08° 9 15 78
AIFS -0.29° 3 5 78
ECMWF -1.46° 8 19 78
UKMO -1.49° 1 12 52