When the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks meet in the NFL Playoffs on Sunday, they'll brrrrrring their A-game. And try to act professional by keeping their touchdown celebrrrrrrations tasteful.
Sorry -- just thinking about that game sends a chill down the spine.
Sunday's NFC Wild Card matchup in Minneapolis is forecasted to be among the coldest games in NFL history. Gameday in Minneapolis should see an expected high temperature of just 3 degrees Fahrenheit.
Yep. Three pitiful, lonely degrees.
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As of Thursday afternoon, searches on both AccuWeather.com and Weather.com showed a high of three degrees on Sunday. AccuWeather forecasts a temperature of minus-1 degree Fahrenheit around the time of the Seahawks-Vikings game's 12:05 p.m. CST kickoff. If that holds, it would put Sunday's playoff game among the three coldest contests in NFL history.
Currently, the three coldest games in league history, according to NFL.com, came in 1967, 1981 and 2007.
The 1967 NFL championship game between the Packers and Cowboys in Green Bay, Wisconsin, had a kickoff temperature of negative 12 degrees Fahrenheit. It's now colloquially known as the "Ice Bowl." The 1981 AFC Championship game in Cincinnati, between the hometown Bengals and the San Diego Chargers, had a kickoff temperature of negative nine degrees. The 2007 NFC Championship between the Packers and New York Giants in Green Bay had a kickoff temperature of minus-1 degree.
The frigid gameday temperatures this Sunday are part of a weather phenomenon expected to blast record-challenging cold weather across much of the Midwest for as long as a week or more.
The graphic below, produced by a computer model accessed via WeatherBell Analytics, shows predicted wind-chill values for the Minneapolis area near the time of Sunday's kickoff. The dark green part of the graphic, showing wind-chill temperatures approaching negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit? Yup, that's the Minneapolis area.
It's tougher to predict how the weather could impact the outcome of Sunday's game. The home Vikings are perhaps more used to extreme cold, but the Seahawks typically fare well in inclement weather, too. Both quarterbacks -- Teddy Bridgewater of Minnesota and Russell Wilson of Seattle -- have winning records in games played below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, per NFL.com.
Either way, the predicted Arctic ambience of Sunday's game is something both teams will have to deal with. But, as they say in sports, those are the brrrreaks.