Reply #10: Yes, I'm not sure if they're also including snowy weather in these "first time" stats...

[cascadiance]

... where certainly in the past many teams have had to play through snowy weather, and in earlier times, they perhaps didn't have the rules they have today of doing delays when lighting strikes, etc. happen.

But it does seem interesting that these are firsts for all of these well known schools with long football histories on the same day. And the timing of this to happen on the first day of the college football season, when normally you would expect sunny and drier weather this time of year seems interesting.

Global warming has as one of its "features" that there is more moisture in the clouds in the atmosphere now, with more of it melted from glaciers, etc., which triggers the newer and more "odd" weather patterns all over the world. Living in Portland, from the beginning of the year we've also been getting higher than average rainfall (and we usually get a lot anyway), largely due to the larger number of rain cloud and storm systems overhead due to this. Well, coincidentally, the last week or so, we've been having a lot drier weather and have had nice and sunny weather in the 80's and 90's this weekend, when other parts of the country got these "storm fronts"... Hmm....

And I recall seeing that even down in San Diego this last week where I moved from almost three years ago, they had warnings for heavy thunderstorms and flooding going on at about the same time...

And even in Iowa City yesterday, before they had those storms, they were saying they had temperatures of around 80 degrees plus too.