According to my phone's weather app, Tucson's highs and lows this week are roughly 74/42. Temps around 7:00 PM in Tucson are upper 50s, dropping to upper 40s by 10:00 PM. For the game Saturday night in Pullman, high of 43 that day, low of 25. Kickoff temp at 7:30 PM will be 30ish? Will this be anything more than unpleasant for the Wildcats? Just curious how hard it is for a warm weather team to play in freezing temps, without precip.
Weather in Tucson this week
- Thread starter TZCoug84
- Start date
Nothing you do can prepare you for such a dramatic drop in temperature. I valeted in Minneapolis for two winters and each time the temp dropped 10 plus degrees to a new low, it was brutal for a couple days. Then your body adjusts and you are fine.
Keep in mind, for folks in Seattle 75 degrees is shorts and t-shirt weather. In Arizona, its sweatshirt/jacket weather. Not a doubt in my mind, they will be miserable in the cold. How much this effects them largely depends on how the game goes. If we get a quick lead, I don't see them rallying. Arizona starts thinking they have a chance... We probably win a shoot out.
Keep in mind, for folks in Seattle 75 degrees is shorts and t-shirt weather. In Arizona, its sweatshirt/jacket weather. Not a doubt in my mind, they will be miserable in the cold. How much this effects them largely depends on how the game goes. If we get a quick lead, I don't see them rallying. Arizona starts thinking they have a chance... We probably win a shoot out.
Unless there is a breeze or some rain I don't think it will impact them too much. My own two cents. But what do I know? I live in Montana.
Did your friends go to the San Diego game watching meetup? I am curious how that went.
Yes, they did. They said there were about 40 people there. They said it was a good time. Much better than being in some bar where you get a game on one TV if you are lucky.
Temps during the game will be 27-32. Cold & crisp, but not frigid. The guys on the 3-deep will be uncomfortable on the sidelines, but the guys playing won’t notice that much. Without wind or rain (neither is forecast now), it might affect the kicker but the guys on the field will be fine.
If our offense can play TOP ball and keep their O on the bench, it might have some mild impact, but I don’t see it being a major factor.
If they get knocked around a little, I suspect they may start looking forward to the nice, warm plane ride home.
Does anybody have some kind of model or non-anecdotal/long-run evidence for how much worse desert teams do in cold-ish temps?
My feeling is, this is not the '67 Ice Bowl. This is not can't-feel-your-extremities and offense-waits-with-hands-in-armpits-for-defense-to-get-off-the-field, or ball-and-field-are-hard-as-a-rock.
This is, clear skies, warm locker room, space heaters on the field, gloves and heavy jackets, 25-degree weather drop. Enough to be uncomfortable, but it ain't Lambeau in January.
I did the first half of my marathon training in Georgia; the second half in NYC winter. Both uncomfortable in their own ways but I wasn't exactly clutching my pearls.
My feeling is, this is not the '67 Ice Bowl. This is not can't-feel-your-extremities and offense-waits-with-hands-in-armpits-for-defense-to-get-off-the-field, or ball-and-field-are-hard-as-a-rock.
This is, clear skies, warm locker room, space heaters on the field, gloves and heavy jackets, 25-degree weather drop. Enough to be uncomfortable, but it ain't Lambeau in January.
I did the first half of my marathon training in Georgia; the second half in NYC winter. Both uncomfortable in their own ways but I wasn't exactly clutching my pearls.
I live in Surprise Arizona, but have been in Vancouver Wa. for 10 days. It took me a week to adjust to the cold and damp. Still don’t like it, but know it will be worse for me Saturday night in Pullman. Spent a lot of time skiing, hunting, fishing in the cold, but not anymore. I have gotten soft in my old age.
Guessing the Arizona team won’t like the colder temp, will definitely feel unpleasant to them Saturday night. If we can get them down early I think they will give up.
Guessing the Arizona team won’t like the colder temp, will definitely feel unpleasant to them Saturday night. If we can get them down early I think they will give up.
Well here's what we got.
What I am looking for is in the month of November/December Arizona/Asu playing @ a "chilly climate location" Those are Utah, UW, Oregon, OSU, WSU, and Colorado.
Looking back for Arizona they haven't won an Away cold weather game in November since they beat Utah in 2014 42-10.
In fact if you look at their schedule there aren't too many away games in the cold late in the season.
That Utah seems to be the only place they can win. They did it in 2012/2014.
The following were losses
Last year - Loss to Oregon
2016 - Loss 69-7 in Pullman, Loss 42-17 to Oregon State
2015 - @UW loss 49-3
2014 - The Utah victory I mentioned. Loss 51-13 vs Oregon
2013 - No Coldweather location games but they did beat Cal just barely (33-28)
2012- @Utah 34-24 win.
2011 - @ Colorado loss, @UW loss
Weather average for November SLC is 49 high to 31 low. Cold, but not Pullman cold at times.
From 2011 to Present Arizona has lost on the road in the following places in November.
Pullman
Eugene
Boulder
Corvalis
Muttlake.
So as far as the PNW is concerned it's pretty much undefeated in November against Arizona. The Wildcats have some serious trouble winning in november against WSU, UW, Oregon, OSU.
In fact I can't find a road Pacific Northwest victory for Arizona since 2008. In Pullman 59-28.
So for what it is worth. Arizona hasn't won a road victory in the PNW in November since 2008.
Therein lies the crux of the issue when it comes to cold weather. When Arizona comes out of the tunnel, the weather won't matter. If we let them stay in the game, it won't matter. If we get ahead of them, they will be more prone to give up. You look at Colorado in Pullman last year and they were finished at half time. Our rainy debacle way back in the day against OSU where Brink melted down in the rain. ASU flopping in the poor weather in 2011. It's easy to quit caring when your fingers are numb out on the field.
Weather matters unless it doesn't. If a team gets up and hits hard on defense, it can cause the other team to break sooner than they otherwise would in my opinion. Hard hits may hurt a little more. The cold can also tire you out faster, as the body uses more energy to stay warm. It makes it psychologically a little harder to make a late comeback.
However, if it is a close game, they won't really notice the cold enough to make a difference.
However, if it is a close game, they won't really notice the cold enough to make a difference.
Another factor is the ball. As it gets cold, it gets harder and more slippery...And it hurts more when it hits your hands. We'll be more accustomed to it than UA will.
50% chance of rain Friday morning, so good chance the turf will be wet. That won't make things any more pleasant.
Agreed damn if that 2008 team didn’t let them hang around to long and then let them slip off the hook. Very uncharacteristic of that team I remember them scoring touchdowns and putting games away early.
The weather will mean nothing if Arizona comes ready to play. Put on some thermal underwear under the uni's and go play. If they have uniform options they will wear the heavier, less ventilated version. A wet ball can be a little harder to catch & hold, but a cold ball really isn't that much different if it is properly inflated.
What I do expect to see is what ever Arizona is capable of bringing in terms of smash mouth football. And I'm expecting that we will bring the same. The outcome of that contest, particularly in the trenches, will determine how the game goes.
What I do expect to see is what ever Arizona is capable of bringing in terms of smash mouth football. And I'm expecting that we will bring the same. The outcome of that contest, particularly in the trenches, will determine how the game goes.
The way ya all are talking about hoping the weather is cold and how it hopefully gives us an advantage, you’d think we were the 5-5 team and they were bringing the 9-1 record to Martin.
Chip - what makes you think there will be space heaters on the field? Pretty sure they won't have their own, and pretty sure the deal is any amenities the home team has (or doesn't) the visitor gets (or doesn't). So no heat for Arizona.
As far as the cold goes, I remember the 1994 game against USC. Played on November 5. 36,686 fans by the way, for you end zone expansion haters. It snowed on Friday, everyone was jacked because of it. Sunny but quite cold on Saturday. forget who their QB was (some pretty boy), but he had no problem with the cold and they beat us 23-10.
My one fun memory of that game is that I was in one of the gyms, on the walkway between them, when the QB came out after halftime. He was about to walk under the walkway, refs with him, and I banged on the window. He looked up, I flipped him off, and I enjoyed it. Probably jacked him up and it is my fault we lost.
It gets cold in the desert. The fact that it’s going to be clear and dry will help them. We need to play well to win.
Last edited:
Allowing 4 touchdowns to THAT WSU team should almost count as a loss.
Appreciate the effort, and clearly several people were hugely impressed with this - but it was precisely the kind of anecdotal post I had hoped to preempt by using the words "model" and "non-anecdotal/long-run." The r2 on this analysis would be around 0 because there is so much noise: how good was the warm-weather team that year? How good were their opponents? Did they have injuries? What was the actual game weather; not the month average? Taking a tiny sample size of n=2 teams while ignoring dozens of other warm-weather/desert teams, using a peanut butter November-temp average rather than actual temps, and lumping Seattle, Eugene & Corvallis in with Pullman, Boulder and Salt Lake as cold-weather environments reveals virtually nothing.
- Arizona is sub-.500 in the last 15 years, and worse in conference. Pretty much any in-conference analysis will correlate with poor performance.
- ASU has an indoor practice dome. UA is getting one if not already. Point is, they're not coming from 105 degrees to 5 degrees
- Pullman weather is supposed to be clear and in the mid-30s at kick. Chilly - but again, not the Ice Bowl...
- Even using monthly temp averages, Pullman/Boulder/SLC are in a different tier than Eugene/Corvallis/Seattle
I think them having space heaters would help us. It causes more of a distraction when they’re huddling around a space heater.
Similar threads
