A winter coat and toque won't be nearly enough for football fans planning to attend NFL playoff games in Kansas City or Buffalo this weekend.
While winter conditions always can be a factor for the playoffs, the current conditions look extreme for Saturday night's Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins wild-card game and Sunday afternoon's Buffalo Bills-Pittsburgh Steelers contest.
Let's start in Kansas City, where an arctic front could create record-setting cold temperatures for an 8 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. local time game.
The National Weather Service currently calls for a temperature of -18 C at kickoff with wind gusts of 36 km/h making it feel like -29 C. If that temperature holds, it will be the coldest game in Chiefs and Dolphins history and the fifth-coldest game of all-time.
The coldest game on record is the 1967 Ice Bowl with the host Green Bay Packers playing the Dallas Cowboys with a temperature of -25 C at kickoff.
The Dolphins, of course, are a warm-weather team. Per CBS Sports, They're 0-10 in their last 10 games played at temperature below 4.5 C.
The next afternoon (1 p.m. ET kickoff) could be even more challenging for the Bills, Steelers and fans in Orchard Park, N.Y., which is just south of Buffalo but often gets hit much harder by wildly unpredictable lake-effect snow.
A winter storm watch starts Saturday in the region with Sunday's AccuWeather forecast calling for anywhere from 12 to 20 cm of snow, combined with wicked winds of 43 km/h with gusts up to 72 km/h. The high is -5 C with winds making it feel like -18 C.
"Travel will be extremely difficult and dangerous," AccuWeather says.
The NFL shot down a Pittsburgh report on Thursday that the league was considering moving the game to Cleveland if conditions worsened.
The league maintained Friday the plan was to still play the game in Buffalo, though New York governor Kathy Hochul said she is declaring a state of emergency in Western New York.
"For my fellow Buffalo Bills fans, here's the advice. If you have tickets to the game, listen to the forecast, drive safely back and forth," Hochul, a Buffalo native, said. "We don't anticipate changes right now but stay tuned because Mother Nature is wildly unpredictable."
Later Friday, the Bills put out a call for snow shovellers starting Saturday night to help clear the stadium.
The Bills have moved two home games to the indoor Ford Field in Detroit in the past 10 years because of terrible conditions in the region, but the Lions also play a home playoff game on Sunday.
Wind usually affects football games more than snow or cold.
A memorable game in Buffalo in December 2021 saw Mac Jones and the New England Patriots beat Josh Allen and the Bills 14-10 with the visitors attempting just three passes with wind gusts approaching 65 km/h.
The Bills' 2022 season, meanwhile, ended with a loss to the visiting Cincinnati Bengals in a fierce snowstorm in Orchard Park.
The brutal weather forecasts have pushed ticket prices well below traditional playoff pricing on the secondary market.
As of Friday morning on StubHub, the get-in price (Canadian money) in Kansas City was $53 in Kansas City and $103 in Buffalo.
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