No one is faster to check the weather forecast than a football player sent to Green Bay for a playoff game in January.
We saw blizzards and inhuman cold weather for the Green Bay Packers game at Lambeau Field. Ice Bowl players in 1967 complained about the effects of frostbite decades later. We all remember the face of New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin turning scary red in an NFC Championship game. The evidence goes part of the reason why the NFL loves winter games at Green Bay. If the Ice Bowl had had a temperature of 40 degrees, maybe it wouldn’t have been remembered as one of the best games in the NFL.
The Seattle Seahawks have the unenviable task of traveling to Green Bay to play the Packers on Sunday, a game that can be streamed live on the Yahoo Sports app. Forecasting is as much a topic of conversation as Russell Wilson or Aaron Rodgers.
[Watch live NFL games on the Yahoo Sports app, here’s how]
The good news for players and fans alike is that the weather shouldn’t be that bad, at least by Northeastern Wisconsin standards.
It could snow in Green Bay on Sunday
The forecast in Green Bay for Sunday is not tropical, but at least manageable. The high should be 23 degrees with a low of 18. Since the kick-off time will be 5:40 p.m., Central – the NFL understands the success of bad weather games on TV and is not shy about them. schedule with a better chance of snow or cold – expect it to be below 20 degrees by the time kick off. There is a 75% chance of precipitation, so we might also have snow.
The Seahawks aren’t used to the weather, but have seen worse lately. They played an outdoor playoff game in Minnesota, between the domed Viking stadiums, minus-6 degrees four seasons ago. The wind chill was minus-25. This game is remarkable for Bud Grant coming out for the short sleeve toss and Blair Walsh to score a basket at the end to give Seattle a victory. It was the third coldest game of all time.
The Packers of course have a lot of history in the cold games. If the temperature is 20 degrees, it would need to drop about another 20 degrees to make it into the top 10 coldest games in Packers history. Some memorable bad-weather playoff games at Lambeau Field included the Ice Bowl, a scenic snow game against the Seahawks at the end of the 2007 season, and a game against the San Francisco 49ers in which Colin Kaepernick played in short sleeves despite being 5 degrees outside.
It’s hard to operate in extremely cold weather and that often makes the football itself less than perfect, but we love a good game in bad weather.
Bad weather games are NFL history
There is just something about watching a great NFL Playoff game on a snow covered field. We remembered the game “Tuck Rule” regardless of the weather, but the backdrop of it set in a blizzard made it iconic.
If it snows Sunday night in Green Bay, it would create an interesting football dynamic. Both teams enjoy establishing the race, despite having Hall of Fame quarterbacks. It won’t be extremely cold, but conditions could dictate a more difficult game for both sides.
The weather forecast looks pretty clear for games in San Francisco, Baltimore and Kansas City this weekend. If we’re going to have a playoff snowstorm, it’s probably going to come from Green Bay. Hopefully, anyone who doesn’t have to be outside Lambeau Field for the game.
– – – – – – –
Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Do you have any advice? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab