NFL Playoff Weather: Depends On Who You Ask

Since we've been keeping track of the weather for this weekend's playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Seattle Seahawks all week (with some pretty good results. . .thank you, Drudge Report), it's time for another update. We're once again comparing three of the leading civilian weather sources to see what they have to say about this weekend's contest.

I want to preface this by saying that some of these sources have altered the high temperature for Sunday, revising it upwards. The high temperature, as it relates to this weekend's game, doesn't have a great deal of relevance. The big reason for that is that the skies over Minneapolis are going to be relatively clear overnight, and as there won't be any clouds, there won't be anything to hold in what little residual heat there might be. As a result, the overnight lows for Saturday night going into Sunday morning are going to get very cold, down as far as -6 to -7 degrees Fahrenheit. With sunrise not coming until nearly 8 AM Central time, there isn't going to be a whole lot of time for things to warm up prior to the 12 noon kickoff.

The three main sources that I've been keeping tabs on are all to the point where they have the Sunday forecast (at least up until noon) broken down by hour. There isn't a lot of difference between them as far as the temperature is concerned, but their wind forecasts are a little different.

The warmest forecast of the three comes from Accuweather.com. The have the temperature for noon on Sunday forecast at a balmy 1 degree above zero.

The bottom number is Accuweather's "RealFeel" temperature, which appears to be the equivalent of the wind chill. Even though the temperature gets warmer as the game wears on, the winds will pick up (from 15 MPH at noon to 20 MPH out of the west by 3 PM), which means it's going to feel colder as we get closer to the end of the game.

Next, we'll move on to Weather Underground. They're sort of in between the other two sources, as they have the temperature at kickoff pegged right at zero.

The first column after the time is the temperature, while the second number is the "Feels Like" temperature. (The third number is the dewpoint temperature.) WUnderground doesn't have the winds kicking up nearly as much as Accuweather does, so things don't look quite as bad. This could be the effect of using a different model than the folks at Accuweather are.

Last, we have The Weather Channel. They have the lowest forecast kickoff temperature at this point, going for 1 degree below zero.

Again, that's the actual temperature and the "Feels Like" temperature in the first two columns there. They appear to be holding back on the winds a little bit as well.

At this point, I'd sort of expect something closer to The Weather Channel or Weather Underground, as I'm not sure if the winds are going to pick up to the extent that Accuweather has them. Don't get me wrong, it's still going to be cold out there, but it might not be as bad as we may have originally thought. It's still going to be the coldest game played at TCF Bank Stadium by a fair bit, and will still be one of the ten coldest games in NFL history. . .it just might not make it into the top five, or be the coldest game in the history of the Minnesota Vikings.

Then again, as I mentioned in an earlier post, things could certainly change between now and then. We'll likely have one more weather update before kickoff for the folks that are going to be trekking to the Twin Cities for this one.