Super Bowl weather forecast looks super

The weather for Sunday's Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif., looks — well, super!

The forecast calls for sunny skies, light winds and a kickoff temperature near 70 degrees, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Edwards.

That's above-average for Feb. 7, according to Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services. The usual high temperature in Santa Clara on that day is 62 degrees, with a low of 44 degrees, he said.

The NFL got a little lucky. An onslaught of El Niño-fueled rain, snow and wind has hit northern California this winter. But weather seldom impacts Super Bowls because most are played in warm-weather cities or domed stadiums.

There are exceptions to the rule.

Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos quarterback, won his only Super Bowl (XLI) while playing for the Indianapolis Colts during a downpour in Miami on Feb. 4, 2007. That was the wettest Super Bowl on record, with nearly an inch of rain measured for the day.

The two times Detroit hosted the Super Bowl — both indoors, in 1982 and 2006  — were also the only two times that snow fell on the host city on game day, according to William Schmitz of the Southeast Regional Climate Center.

Schmitz said the chilliest game day was Super Bowl VI on Jan. 16, 1972, at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, where the high temperature reached 43 degrees.

The NFL was lucky it wasn't colder two years ago when the game was played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the high temperature reached 55 degrees. Amazingly, that was the warmest day of that entire month, according to the National Weather Service.

The warmest Super Bowls both took place in southern California. The high temperature for Super Bowl VII in 1973 in Los Angeles and Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003 in San Diego was 82 degrees.