The Spread

Where the models disagree today

26 archived cities · daily high temperature · day 3 (2026-09-02) · guidance as of 2026-08-30T19:50Z

The biggest split in the forecast three days out, this coming Wednesday the 2nd of September, is over Salt Lake City. Across the 26 cities we archive, the models there land anywhere from 74 to 87 degrees — a 13-degree gap — and they've broken into four separate groups rather than clustering around one answer. That's about as divided as our sample gets. When the models fan out like this and refuse to agree, it means nobody should treat any single number for Salt Lake City on Wednesday as settled; the honest read is a wide range, not a forecast.

Washington sits close behind, with highs stretched from 92 to 104. Seattle spans 60 to 72 and Minneapolis 79 to 91, the latter also split four ways. These are the places where the models are still arguing. At the other end, several cities are effectively agreed: Denver's runs cover only about three degrees, and San Antonio and Phoenix are similarly tight. Where the models converge like that, the forecast is worth leaning on.

A few cities shifted noticeably in the past day. Houston's middle-of-the-pack number for Wednesday dropped nearly six degrees, down to about 87, and Chicago and Detroit each eased down a few degrees. Seattle and New Orleans nudged up around four. These are day-to-day wobbles in what the models expect, not weather that has happened.

Worth remembering that Wednesday is three days off, and the numbers are the models' best guesses rather than anything observed — the further out you look, the more they tend to disagree, which is why the seven-day figures spread even wider.

One note on the models themselves: across every city and day we track, the American GFS model has been running warmest, sitting more than two degrees above the middle of the pack and landing as the warm outlier far more often than any other. Something to keep in mind when it looks toastier than its rivals.

Issued 2026-08-30T12:51Z from 26 cities' archived model runs. Written from the numbers on this page — no forecast of its own.

Where they're fighting

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 is the gap 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.

Seattle 61–66° Minneapolis 79–91° Boston 68–72° Buffalo 79–85° Detroit 91–99° New York 73–82° Chicago 91–98° Salt Lake City 75–88° Philadelphia 84–94° San Francisco 67–71° Washington 92–104° Denver 84–88° St. Louis 95–103° Los Angeles 82–89° Charlotte 92–100° Oklahoma City 98–102° San Diego 79–90° Phoenix 99–103° Atlanta 92–97° Dallas 95–102° New Orleans 86–93° Houston 80–91° San Antonio 97–100° Orlando 88–95° Tampa 88–94° Miami 86–92°

A filled marker 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.

The maps

The national field maps have their own pages — one map each, so a page carries one coastline instead of four.

  • Temperature — Where the models disagree about tomorrow's temperature, and what each one of them actually says.
  • Precip — Whether anything falls at all, and how many of the models think so.
  • Pressure — The surface pattern as one model draws it, the rain falling under it, and how both have moved between runs.

Which models run hot

Each model's average distance from the cross-model median, across every archived city and lead. Positive runs warm. Outlier columns count model-days at least 3° off the median. Consensus products are excluded — they are averages of the rows below, not competitors.

Modelvs median WarmCool Model-days
GFS +2.33° 30 3 78
ECMWF +0.56° 12 8 78
ICON +0.44° 7 3 52
GEM +0.05° 11 9 78
UKMO -0.21° 4 5 52
AIGFS -0.46° 7 9 78
AIFS -1.01° 1 11 78

What moved overnight

Cities whose cross-model median for 2026-09-02 shifted at least 3° in the last 24 hours.

  • Houston -6° → 87°
  • New Orleans +4° → 92°
  • Chicago -3° → 93°
  • Detroit -3° → 94°

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 summary at the top 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.