Saturday, January 4, 2014

Football: How Cold Will Tommorrow's Packers/49ers Playoff Game Be? (and the coldest games in history)

From the New York Post:
So cold that frozen beer likely for fans at Green Bay
So cold that frozen beer likely for fans at Green Bay A Packers fan thaws out his frozen beer by putting it on the grill in the sub freezing temperatures in the parking lot of Lambeau Field in 2008. 
At Lambeau Field on Sunday, there may be Frozen Beer in addition to the Frozen Tundra.

Temperatures for the 49ers-Packers playoff game are expected to range from a glacial minus-5 degrees to minus-20 degrees, according to weather.com. So, for those tailgating in Green Bay or buying beers from Lambeau concession vendors, how long will it take for a Coors Light to turn into a Coors Slushy?
According to Cornell professor H. Floyd Davis, it should be under an hour.

Davis was gracious enough to turn The Post’s question into an experiment. He poured a refrigerated 12-ounce Labatts Blue into a plastic cup, setting the cup outside his Lansing, N.Y., home, where the temperature was zero degrees with barely any wind.

Davis said 40 minutes into the experiment, the beer developed approximately a 2-inch deep crust that would have made drinking the Labatts a challenge.

“After an hour, I tried to pour it out into a measuring cup,” Davis said.” Only about four ounces of the beer was liquid, the remaining eight ounces had the consistency of a ‘slushy.’ ”

“Of course, this was at zero degrees [Fahrenheit] with no wind. At -20 [Fahrenheit], and some wind, my guess is that you should [get] half the times given above.”

Will Dichtel, an assistant professor at Cornell, said he thinks there’s a better avenue to go on Sunday than beer.

“I can’t imagine it being very fun to drink beer outside on a minus-15 degree day — coffee with whiskey sounds like a much better option,” he said....MORE
And from the National Weather Service:

Wind Chill, Temperature, and the Coldest Games in NFL History
Let's briefly take a look at some of the coldest games in NFL History with respect to temperature and wind chill values.

The chart below shows the top 15 coldest NFL games based on the actual air temperature (degrees F) around game time.  As you can see, based on the actual air temperature, the top two coldest games were the 1967 Ice Bowl (Cowboys vs Packers) and the 1982 Freezer Bowl (Chargers vs Bengals). Although the 1967 Ice Bowl was colder based on the actual temperature, some have argued that the 1982 Freezer Bowl was actually the colder of the two games because the winds were stronger during the game, thereby creating lower windchill values.  Let's take a closer look at these two nasty weather playoff games with respect to temperature and wind chill. 
 

The chart on the lower left below is a comparison of the actual air temperature between the Ice Bowl and Freezer Bowl around the time the game was played (Noon to ~ 4 pm). The actual air temperature for the Ice Bowl (blue line) ranged from 5 to 8 degrees colder than the Freezer Bowl (red line).  The chart on the lower right is a comparison of the winds speeds (top portion of image on lower right) and wind chill (bottom portion of image on the lower right values for both games.   Note that although the wind speeds around the time of the Freezer Bowl (red line) were nearly double that of the Ice Bowl (green line), the wind chill values were actually lower (colder) during the Ice Bowl (green line in the lower half of the image on the right below) ...MUCH MORE