Atlanta plays Philadelphia on Sunday for the NFC Championship, and Mother Nature is having her say. A major snowstorm is going to pass across Northern Illinois, Northern Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania on Saturday. The picture to the right represents the potential for heavy snowfall, with the area circled in red estimated to have a 70% probability of more than four inches of snow, the area circled in blue having a 10% probability of 12 inches or more snow, and for football fans, the area in green, which includes Philadelphia, having a 40% probability of more than 12 inches of snow.

The National Weather Service has a Winter Storm Warning out for the Philadelphia area tonight, predicting heavy snow on Saturday afternoon with near whiteout conditions. By game time on Sunday, a second phase of the storm will occur, with less snowfall, but strong winds that will cause blowing and drifting snow, and blizzard-like conditions. It sounds more like what you would expect in Minnesota than in Pennsylvania.

The temperatures won’t be cooperating either, with Saturday highs in the mid 20s. amd highs on Sunday only around 20 degrees.

Maybe this will be a repeat of what happened in Cincinnati just after their major Christmas Eve 2004 storm, where they had to ask fans to come out and clean up the snow on Christmas day prior to their December 26th game against the Giants.

Obviously, we here at LawrencevilleWeather.com are pulling for the Falcons to win on Sunday. But, the Dirty Birds have less experience with the colder weather that always seems to affect the playoff games. On the other hand, Philadelphia always seems to crap out in the NFC Championship game. Although weather forecasts are are our forté rather than sports predictions, we’ll predict the Falcons by 3 points.