Bills fans may find last Tuesday’s game against the Titans forgettable, but even before opening kickoff, the game was one for the NFL history books. It was the first Tuesday night game in 10 years and just the third since the 1960s.
Of course, the most recent contest time change was forced by extreme circumstances created by COVID-19. But 10 years ago, the weather blew the whistle on a scheduled Sunday night game between the Eagles and Vikings. That’s because a powerful blizzard was pummeling the Northeast.
On Christmas Day, 2010, a fairly harmless-looking storm system was churning in the Gulf of Mexico, scooping up gobs of tropical moisture. But a day later, that storm would travel north and meet up with a pretty burly blast of arctic air over the Eastern United States. Add in a little atmospheric magic, and you’ve got yourself a powerful nor’easter.
This storm would go on to bring blasting wind gusts of 50 to 70 mph from Boston to Cape May, N.J., and a swath of snow measuring 2 to 3 feet from central New Jersey through New England. Philadelphia’s final total of 12.2 inches may not seem overwhelming to Western New Yorkers, but it was enough for the city’s mayor to declare a snow emergency and postpone the Vikings Eagles game until Tuesday, December 28.
Turns out, the Eagles’ game didn’t matter much. While the team sat at home waiting out the snow on that Sunday, the Packers ran all over the Giants and gave Philly its division title without a single snap. When the Birds finally did play, it was sort of anticlimactic: a 24-14 loss to the Vikings at home.
New episodes of Heather’s Weather Whys are posted to the WGRZ YouTube channel every Wednesday evening. If you have a weather question for Heather to answer, send it to her at heather.waldman@wgrz.com or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.
