The accuracy program

Which model should you trust for your spot on Saturday?

Every weather app shows you one model and calls it the forecast. We score seven of them against the instrument that was actually sitting in the water, every hour, at every lead time from one day out to seven, and publish the table.

Method

The archive holds 137,452 station-hours scored at 8 NOAA stations, seven weather models and three wave models, from January 2024 through August 27, 2026.

  • Against the buoy, not against another model. Reanalysis is a model too. A wind sensor at Sombrero Key is the truth for Sombrero Key.
  • Lead time is the whole point. A model that nails 24 hours and falls apart at 96 is a different tool than one that is average at both.
  • By season and by spot. Winter fronts and summer sea breeze are different physics. Offshore and Florida Bay are different water.
  • Sample sizes shown. A ranking with 40 hours behind it is a rumor. We show n on everything.
Models scored
ECMWFEuropean Centre, IFS 0.25°
GFSNOAA Global Forecast System
NBMNWS National Blend of Models
ICONGerman Weather Service
UKMOUK Met Office
GEMEnvironment Canada
AIFSECMWF AI model
Ground truth stations
VAKF1 Virginia Key · CO-OPS 8723214
LKWF1 Lake Worth Pier · CO-OPS 8722670
LONF1 Long Key
SMKF1 Sombrero Key
SANF1 Sand Key
KYWF1 Key West · CO-OPS 8724580
SPGF1 Settlement Point
41122 Hollywood Beach
41114 Fort Pierce
42095 Satan Shoal
41009 Canaveral East
42013 WFS Central
42023 WFS South
FMRF1 Fort Myers · CO-OPS 8725520
VENF1 Venice
RKXF1 Rookery Bay
Fowey Rocks (FWYF1) has no archive after 2022 and Molasses Reef (MLRF1) none after 2021 (NDBC disestablished it on February 28, 2023), so the program scores against the six stations that kept reporting plus the two waverider buoys. Neither of them, nor Alligator Reef (ALRF1), which returns no data, is used for a live reading in the app, and no published call or receipt is paired with one. The three NOS gauges (Virginia Key, Lake Worth Pier, Key West) are read straight from NOAA CO-OPS; NDBC's hourly copy of them ran 36 to 42 minutes behind when measured on October 6 and 7, 2026, and stands in only when CO-OPS does not answer.