CLEVELAND -- The Steelers and Browns won't exactly be facing a monsoon Sunday, as some of the more dire weather forecasts had been suggesting, but heavy rain and wind should still make a mess of FirstEnergy Stadium.
Some forecasts for Northeast Ohio earlier in the week had called for as much as 3-5 inches of rain and wind gusts up to 40 mph, but that's normalized quite a bit in the 24 hours leading up to the 1:02 p.m. kickoff. As of late Saturday night, the National Weather Service was calling for a 90 percent chance of rain at kickoff -- down from 100 percent three hours earlier -- and winds in the range of 20 mph. The chance of rain rises to 100 percent by game's end, with the winds staying the same.
Unlike Heinz Field, FirstEnergy Stadium doesn't have an open end, so the wind has less of an impact there, though kickers in the past have spoken of trouble related to the two big notches in the upper decks at either end zone.
Three of the 18 coldest games in the Steelers' history have also been played along Lake Erie, but this won't be among them. Sunday's kickoff temperature is forecast to be 62 degrees.