EDMONTON – The forecast for Sunday’s CFL Western Final at Commonwealth Stadium is pleasing many football fans.
Global Edmonton’s Chief Meteorologist Jesse Beyer thinks temperatures at kick off will be around +5°C, with partly cloudy skies setting the background for the important play-off game.
“The warm up couldn’t have come at a better time for football fans,” he said. “Our highs could be close to -10°C by mid next week.”
Assuming that forecast holds up, Sunday’s game will have the warmest temperature of all Western Finals held in Edmonton over the past 25 years.
The Eskimos have hosted the Western Final five other times since 1990, and Mother Nature tends to take it easy on us.
Most recently, on a clear day in 2003, we saw the coldest play-off final conditions when the temperature at kick-off was -3°C.
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The four other times we enjoyed home-field advantage, temperatures ranged from -2°C to +4°C with mostly clear skies, slightly cooler than this year’s mild weather expectations.
But there will be one force to be reckoned with: the wind.
“The warm up will be coupled with gusty conditions for Saturday and Sunday,” Beyer explained. “West to south-west flow could reach 30 km/h with gusts near 50 km/h early in the day.” However, he thinks there’s a good chance it will ease throughout the game.
While the wind gusts may make things feel a little cooler, football fans will still be faring better than many of the Western Final matches that have been played elsewhere in Alberta.
Look through the past 12 Western Final games that Calgary has hosted in the past 25 years, and you’ll see that frigid temperatures have been a common theme.
Three of those matches at McMahon Stadium had temperatures that hovered around -20°C at kick off. Four additional games ranged from -6°C to -12°C, many with blowing snow.
And while there’s no clear pattern of teams that win in the mild conditions like we expect for Sunday, there is an interesting frigid-weather connection.
Every time Calgary has played in a Western Final -12°C or colder, they’ve lost. That includes twice at home versus the Edmonton Eskimos in 1993 and 1996.
So perhaps there are now some Edmonton fans wishing for cooler temperatures to stack the cards in their favour. But chances are, the people with plans to watch the game would rather do so in the forecast conditions.
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