The Minnesota Vikings may be used to playing in the cold, but their hometown of Minneapolis is warming faster than almost every other city with a professional football team.
Football season in Minneapolis, which runs from September to January, is now 5 degrees warmer than it was some 50 years ago. That’s according to a new analysis of federal data by Climate Central, a climate change communications and research group, which found that between 1970 and 2024, the 30 cities that host National Football League teams have warmed an average of 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Nationwide, the analysis found that NFL cities are now experiencing 14 more days that reach or exceed 91 degrees Fahrenheit than they did in 1970.
The warming trend was especially pronounced for Midwest cities, the analysis found. Minneapolis was second only to Las Vegas, which warmed by 5.1 degrees. Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers, warmed by an average of 4.4 degrees. And Detroit, the Lions’ hometown, warmed by 3.8 degrees.
“The Midwest is having a lot of its warming in the winter in particular, and so it’s not surprising to see such a large amount of warming,” Jen Brady, senior data analyst for Climate Central, told Inside Climate News.
The research was published ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl and adds to a growing body of research that highlights how winter is the fastest-warming season in the Midwest. Minnesota has warmed by roughly 3 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, according to the state’s department of natural resources. In many ways, that increase has been most noticeable during the winter months.
Last winter, which was the warmest on record for many Midwestern states, was also one of the region’s driest. The drought conditions led to major financial headaches in places like Minnesota and Wisconsin, where many rural towns rely on winter tourism and outdoor recreation as a key source of income. The mild winters have also caused safety concerns for popular Midwest activities like ice fishing, which require thick and consistent ice formation to support people and vehicles.
“Full disclosure, I am from the Cleveland area, so I am a Browns fan. And those kinds of football games we love are going to maybe become less common—those cold, snowy games,” Brady said. “What we’re going to see is not what we think of as traditional football weather in the Midwest.”
Counterintuitively, Brady added, there could also be an increase in games that get snowed out—meaning there’s simply too much snow. That’s due to something scientists call “lake effect storms,” she said, which is when the Great Lakes don’t freeze over in the winter and a passing cold front picks up moisture from the open water and then dumps it as snow.
Large swings between too much snow and not enough snow, as well as temperature swings, are something climatologists have noted could become more common in the Midwest as global warming accelerates. As more energy is injected into the planet’s weather systems, it can result in what people are now calling “weather whiplash.” This January, National Weather Service data shows that temperatures in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro jumped from a low of -19 degrees Fahrenheit to a high of 52 degrees in a little over a week—a staggering 71-degree difference.
“What we’re going to see is not what we think of as traditional football weather in the Midwest.”
— Jen Brady, Climate Central senior data analyst
“That’s kind of the story of climate change: extremes,” Brady said. “You know, more of everything, bigger of everything.”
Climate change has also impacted individual football games in recent months, Brady added, pointing to a hurricane that delayed a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game in October and a series of wildfires that forced the Los Angeles Rams’ playoff game in January to be moved to Arizona.
Climate scientists say the world is currently on track to warm by at least 3 degrees Celsius—or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit—by the end of the century, if countries don’t do far more to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, which continue to hit record high levels. The United Nations says crossing that warming threshold will bring about devastating consequences for humans and wildlife, including a growing number of species going extinct and significant loss in global revenue.
During Sunday’s Super Bowl, one ad, paid for by a group of climate scientists, reiterated those warnings.
“When she takes her first steps, wildfires will have burned millions more acres she could have explored,” a voiceover says, referring to children in the ad. “By the time a child born today goes to college, it may be too late to leave them the world we promised.”
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Kristoffer Tigue
Reporter, Midwest
Kristoffer Tigue is a staff writer for Inside Climate News, covering climate issues in the Midwest. He previously wrote the twice-weekly newsletter, Today’s Climate, and helped lead ICN’s national coverage on environmental justice. His work has been published in Reuters, Scientific American, Mother Jones, HuffPost and many more. Tigue holds a Master’s degree in journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.
