It was 60 degrees in Denver when the Broncos squared off against the Patriots in the AFC championship game on Sunday.

Could it be similarly sultry in East Rutherford on Super Bowl Sunday?

Not likely, said David Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University.

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New Jersey is locked into a pattern of below freezing temps that looks like it will linger into early February.

“Super Bowl week will be very cold,” said Robinson. “We’re set up for a wintry couple of weeks. It’s going to be cold and occasionally stormy. It’s too early to say whether we’re going to be in a tranquil pattern or unsettled pattern on the day of the game. By this time next week, we should know more about whether there’s the potential for an impactful storm”

Between Thanksgiving and the first week of January, a volatile weather cycle delivered several days of near-record breaking warmth, along with a series of snowstorms. On Dec. 21, the first day of winter, the mercury soared up to 73 degrees in parts of New Jersey. Four days later, it was back into the icebox, as temperatures plummeted nearly 50 degrees for a bitter cold Christmas Day.

Old Man Winter served up weeks of meteorological curveballs, culminating with a single-day deep freeze on Jan. 7 that whomped New Jersey with double digit subzero wind chills. Over the last couple of weeks, the weather pattern has been calmer, a manageable January mix of moderate cold snaps and quick-hit snowstorms.

Don’t get complacent, though. Robinson said that we could be heading into another stretch of weird weather leading up to the Super Bowl. It begins on Tuesday, when an Alberta Clipper will mutate into a strong low pressure system just off the coast. Robinson said the forecast model has changed dramatically over the past 24 hours and the system could bring up to 10 inches of snow.

“We knew cold air was coming in but we didn’t expect this system to be so sharply defined so close to the coast,” said Robinson. “It’s going to tighten up close to the coast. We thought that was going to happen well off the coast. We didn’t know the low was going to be close enough to the coast to give plowable snow. We’ve seen a train of clipper systems. This is more robust than the other systems. I don’t think this will be a crippling storm but everyone should be on guard.”

On Wednesday morning, temperatures will be in the single digits.

“It will be painfully cold, dangerously cold but not the magnitude of cold that we saw a couple of weeks ago,” said Robinson. “There’s a small threat of snow on Thursday and then a slight moderation, with near normal temperatures on Saturday.”

Looking towards Feb. 2, Robinson said that if southern moisture coalesces with Arctic air, well, the Seahawks and the Broncos could tussle on a snow-coated gridiron.

“The introduction of moisture from the south increases the odds of a meaningful storm,” said Robinson. “You can’t really lock in anything yet in terms of storms but our long range models suggest that we’re going to be on the cold side of normal into the first couple of weeks of February.”

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