The 50th Super Bowl is being played in Santa Clara, California this Sunday all while one of the strongest El Niño's is in play.
An El Niño year typically means wetter than average conditions for California and most of the southern United States.
The Southeast Regional Climate Center put together a list of the previous 49 Super Bowl games and the weather accompanying that day.
A few nuggets can be drawn from their table of information, including:
• 17 games were played indoors
• 18 games had a trace or more of rain nearby
• Two games has snow on game day (1982, 2006)
• One game was played during an ice storm (2000)
A little more digging shows 11 Super Bowls have been played in California.
Even more digging, and of those 11 years, eight were also during El Niño years!
Since El Niño's typically correlate with wetter conditions in the Golden State, one would think most of these games would have some significant rain. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
Not a single Super Bowl game in California — let alone one during an El Niño year — has had a drop of rain. Instead, the most significant weather was a stiff breeze or the warmest high temperature (82 degrees in 1973 and 2003 — both El Niño years).
It looks like this year won't be much different, either.
The current forecast is calling for sunny skies and highs near 70 degrees, which will continue the trend of insignificant Super Bowl weather in California during El Niño years.
