You may have heard that the Seahawks wildcard game against the Vikings is going to be a cold one. In addition to being a Hawks fan for their entire existence, I am a meteorologist, and knowing the weather pattern, I thought that the forecast of temperatures in the teens at game time looked a little generous. Indeed, the forecast for Minneapolis has been adjusted down, and the National Weather Service is now forecasting a high temperature of just 1°F on Sunday. Add in a wind of 10 mph, and that brings the wind chill to -15°F!

Predictably, we're now hearing murmurs of how Minnesota is the better cold weather team, since they've been playing their home games outside for, you know, two whole years now. So I thought I'd examine their cold weather prowess by looking at what has actually happened since they left their comfy dome.

I'll start by showing the data for each game over the last two years for both the Seahawks and Vikings.

I listed the high temperature for the day of the game at the nearest major airport, since those data should be reliable, and the high temperature should be fairly representative of average game conditions.

Over the entire two years, the average temperature of all Vikings games was 57.6°F compared to 61.2°F for the Hawks. The Hawks wins came at an average temperature of 62.2°F versus 55.6°F for the Vikings. Strangely, losses occurred at an average of 59.8°F for both teams. The average temperature of home games for the Vikings was 51.1°F and 55.7°F for the Hawks. Of course, since the majority of games occur during the fall, these numbers aren't surprising. Not much to see there.

Unfortunately, the sample size for cold weather games in the last two years is very small. The Hawks are 2-2 in games played at or below 40°F and the Vikings are 5-3. The Hawks have played but one game that was genuinely below freezing - a 24-20 loss at Kansas City on Nov 16, 2014. By contrast, the Vikings have played 5 games at or below freezing, and they are 4-1 in those games with wins against Green Bay, the NY Giants, Carolina, and Chicago and the lone loss at Chicago in 2014.

All that may not mean much considering the forecast. In the last two seasons, neither team has played in anything remotely like what is expected in Minnesota on Sunday. The closest either team has come was in 2014 when Minnesota beat both Carolina and Chicago with temperatures in the low 20s. There is a big difference between low 20s and 1.

When the 49ers played an ice bowl playoff game at Green Bay back in 2014, I genuinely believed the weather would hurt the relatively fairer weather 49ers. The high temperature that day was 12°F, but it seemed to have little effect on them, and they won the game 23-20. After that game, I came to believe that the weather really doesn't have much effect on 20-something elite athletes at the prime of their lives. It is probably true that the better team usually wins regardless of the weather.

Nevertheless, it is also true that the Vikings have a bit more experience playing in sub-freezing weather than the Seahawks. Hopefully, Sunday's weather has about as much effect on the Hawks as it did on the 49ers in Green Bay two years ago.

Go Hawks!

Corrected 49ers/Packers score and temperature.