A story recently published in the Associated Press (AP) and carried by many news outlets indicates it was so cold at the January Kansas City Chiefs Playoff Game, people lost digits to severe frostbite:
Some of the people who attended the near-record cold Kansas City Chiefs playoff game in January had to undergo amputations after suffering frostbite, a Missouri hospital said Friday.
The cold was quite severe, and there was ample warning, as the National Weather Service (NWS) warned fans of the cold saying temperatures and wind chill would be “dangerously cold:”
Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills continue today and tonight. Still looking at a temperature around -2° and a wind chill around -24° at 7 pm tonight in KC.
We likely won't see a wind chill above zero in KC again until late Wednesday morning. pic.twitter.com/qAyRSe2rAO
— NWS Kansas City (@NWSKansasCity) January 13, 2024
The NWS added in a second post, “If you have to be outdoors, make sure to dress appropriately. With expected wind chills of 20 to 40 below, frostbite can set in as quickly as ten minutes.”
The AP story reported on the temperature and wind chill factor at the game:
The temperature for the Dolphins-Chiefs wild-card playoff game was minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 Celsius), and wind gusts made for a wind chill of minus 27 degrees F (minus 33 C). That shattered the record for the coldest game in Arrowhead Stadium history, which had been 1 degree F (minus 17 C), set in a 1983 game against Denver and matched in 2016 against Tennessee.
In a previous AP story, it was reported the cold at the playoff game was so extreme, that a helmet shattered in due to the brittle plastic caused by the cold:
It was so cold that Patrick Mahomes’ helmet shattered on a hit. Andy Reid’s mustache froze on the sideline. Fans and players alike huddled for warmth, trying their best to grit their way through the fourth-coldest game in NFL history.