The Big Chill: DFW’s Top 10 Bad-Weather Games

From Landry to Luka, The Big Chill: DFW’s Top 10 Memorable Weather Games

Richie Whitt | Feb 15, 2021

Fittingly, Luka Doncic went cold.

On the most bone-chilling February 14 in the recorded history of Dallas-Fort Worth, the Dallas Mavericks’ star chilled an otherwise steamy 44-point performance by missing an open 3-pointer that would have likely forced overtime in the 121-118 loss to the Portland Trailblazers. After making five of his first seven triples, Doncic’s most important shot succumbed to DFW’s Valentine’s Vortex.

“I thought it was in,” Doncic said. “It went in and out, so I was disappointed and that’s on me. I should have hit the shot.”

While the Mavs were left without a much-needed victory, much of Dallas remains without power amidst one of its most frigid Winter blasts.

Sunday’s low of 9 degrees shattered the old record of 15, set in 1915 when the sport of basketball prohibited players to shoot after dribbling. Area snowfall totals of 4 inches also broke record amounts established in 1951.

For the first time, the Metroplex is under a Wind Chill Warning with “feels like” temperatures expected to plunge to minus-30 Tuesday morning.

Despite the Mavs’ main man with ice in his veins freezing up at precisely the wrong time, Doncic’s performance cracks the list of DFW’s most memorable “weather games.”

10. 12.9.13 – The wind chill at kickoff is a brutal minus-9 degrees. It turns out to be the good news, as the stiff and shoddy Cowboys’ defense allows 348 passing yards to journeyman Bears’ quarterback Josh McCown in a 45-28 loss at frosty Soldier Field.

9. 12.22.89 – With the temperature bitterly dipping to 3 outside, Rolando Blackman lights up Reunion Arena with a 31-point performance (without attempting a single 3-pointer) that helps the playoff-bound Mavs beat the Clippers and improve to 12-12.

8. 12.24.89 – You know it’s bad when the temperature matches your win total … and both are 1. On the coldest day in DFW history (minus-1), the Cowboys cap a 1-15 season with a 20-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers. It is so bitterly cold that the toilets in Texas Stadium freeze, prompting Dallas sportswriting icon Frank Luksa to opine: “The 1989 season was so bad it wouldn’t even flush.”

7. 2.14.21 – On the coldest Valentine’s Day in DFW history, Doncic spoils a 44-point performance by missing an open 3-pointer that would’ve surely heated up an overtime against Portland.

6. 5.3.09 – Though it isn’t a “game”, the stormy Spring day results in a permanent, devastating outcome as Cowboys’ scouting assistant Rich Behm is paralyzed from the waist down after a 64mph wind gust (one degree shy of an official tornado) blows down the team’s Valley Ranch indoor practice structure during a rookie minicamp.

5. 2.6.11 – A debilitating arctic blast turns DFW into horrible hosts. Frigid temperatures and icy roads hamper travel, cancel events and send six fans to the hospital after ice falls from the roof of Cowboys Stadium. At the end of a long, bad week, Cowboys fans have to watch a Super Bowl XLV featuring two of their most-hated teams: Steelers vs. Packers.

4. 1.17.93 – This wasn’t a wintry mix, but rather pig slop. In a game they aren’t supposed to win and on a field that was barely playable, Alvin Harper sloshes through Candlestick Park’s rain-soaked, muddy sod for a 70-yard catch-and-run that punctuates the Cowboys’ NFC Championship Game upset of the 49ers and a ticket to Super Bowl XXVII.

3. 1.1.79 – Neither hypothermia caused by a sub-freezing wind chill nor a 22-point deficit can stop Joe Montana in the 1979 Cotton Bowl. With Notre Dame trailing Houston, 34-12, late in the third quarter, Montana – with the aid of hot chicken soup – returns from the locker room to lead an improbable rally and a 35-34 victory in a game that sees only 7,000 in attendance and a 30mph wind dictating every point scored in the south end zone.

2. 11.25.93 – Leon Lett’s brain freeze. On a turbulent Thanksgiving that surprises fans – and weatherfolks – with an ice storm that transforms Texas Stadium into a snow globe, Lett infamously and inexplicably attempts to recover a blocked field goal in the waning seconds of a heart-breaking, mind-numbing defeat to the Dolphins.

1. 12.31.67 – Though it’s played 1,000 miles north in a world accustomed to the frozen tundra, the “Ice Bowl” forever burns a painful image in the hearts and minds of Cowboys fans. The 1967 NFL Championship Game at Lambeau Field includes coaching legends Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, the Packers’ Bart Starr’s game-winning touchdown in the final seconds and a brisk temperature of minus-15.

Published Feb 15, 2021

RICHIE WHITT