David Robinson grew up in Tenafly, N.J., harbors a rooting interest in football and is a trained climatologist. <\/p>\n
Robinson saw those three unrelated threads of his life geography, sports and weather woven uniquely together when the National Football League decided to hold Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium on Feb. 2, 2014 the first-ever outdoor, cold-weather site for the game. <\/p>\n
Given the heightened interest about game-day conditions for this Super Bowl, Robinson, a Rutgers University professor and New Jerseys state climatologist, has launched a website to help satiate fans curiosity about all things Feb. 2 climatologically speaking. The site, designed by Robinsons research assistant, Dan Zarrow, is at biggameweather.com. <\/p>\n
When I heard the Super Bowl would be held here I knew we had to do something weather-related, Robinson said. We started piecing the data together this past fall. <\/p>\n
Then the New Jersey State Police contacted Robinson and asked him to prepare a report on what they might expect from the weather. Robinson and his team at Rutgers gathered data looking at weather for the week leading up to the game day as well as Feb. 2. Reliable data stretch back more than 80 years. Robinsons team generated about 50 pages of data, which he used to brief the state police. <\/p>\n
Some of the data have been rendered into colorful bar graphs, pie charts and line graphs on Robinsons weather site. <\/p>\n
Robinson is quick to note that while meteorology has made significant improvements in recent years, it is impossible to predict the weather for a particular day with any accuracy more than a week or so away from that date. <\/p>\n
Maybe a week ahead you can start to see a potential storm threat, and only a couple of days out at best can you zero in on what the actual conditions are likely to be, he said. <\/p>\n
His site shows what has historically occurred on Feb. 2, using data for Newark Liberty International Airport, which is close enough to MetLife Stadium to be representative. <\/p>\n
If Feb. 2, 2014, turns out to be a typical Feb. 2, one might expect a temperature of 34 degrees at game time, with winds of 10 miles per hour out of the northwest, and only a 26 percent chance of precipitation certainly not Miami or Phoenix, but not unbearable. <\/p>\n
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Climatologist keeps an eye on the Super Bowl sky<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Robinson grew up in Tenafly, N.J., harbors a rooting interest in football and is a trained climatologist. Robinson saw those three unrelated threads of his life geography, sports and weather woven uniquely together when the National Football League decided to hold Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium on Feb. 2, 2014 the first-ever outdoor, cold-weather site for the game. Continue reading