The thing with El Niño winters is that, despite the overall warmth, you can always get a cold snap here or there. Usually it is nothing like in an ordinary winter, but if the timing is just so, it may coincide with a memorable occasion. What is forecast to be one of the warmer winters in decades will incredibly be known for featuring the coldest home game in the history of a franchise residing in the most-frigid locale in the National Football League. And I was there.

Would years of indoor football bring a small crowd? Nope: a sellout. The billowing breath from the surrounding fans reminded me of those film clips, the muffled claps sounding of Lambeau. I never imagined I would share a historic Vikings weather game with 50,000 hearty folks, when this team should not have been good enough to be in such a position.

I have always been drawn to winter weather, though not as an outdoor enthusiast; I have yet to ride a snowmobile, and barely attempted skiing in school, to say nothing of my lack of ice skating ability. Rather, I consider our cold winters to be a badge of honor in our country. We’re the Americans who choose to live in a place that goes below zero 30 days a year, sometimes not coming up for air above zero in an entire day, and we live to tell about it come springtime. And, while the creeping age of my late-thirties makes shoveling more of a literal pain, while the cold increasingly infiltrates my body – you know the feeling – the ambiance is what gives our region its character.

This was the character that helped create the legends of the NFL teams to our east and west. We know about the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field, but the Vikings built their reputation on neo-Arctic weather over their first two decades. Of course, when you have a team that played playoff games edging ever-close to the climatologically coldest day of the year – and when that team wins those home games – you will develop a storied history. Bud Grant refusing to allow warming devices on his team’s sideline, the old NFL Films footage of breath clouds in the Met Stadium sunshine – this is part of what made the Vikes and the league itself become ingrained amongst its fans.

My team became weather wimps during three-plus decades in the Metrodome, and while I hoped their coming new stadium would be open-air to bring back that wintry home-field advantage, I understood the need for a roof to justify public financing and multiple uses. That meant a two-year window at the Gophers’ TCF Bank Stadium to hopefully see the purple in their onetime element.

I was 3 years old the last time the Vikings played home games outdoors, so my trip to watch them play the Bears on a 24-degree day a year ago was a pilgrimage of sorts, a glimpse of what I missed from the years before I was born and became a fan. If that was it for me, I was satisfied ... and then this season, Minnesota won the NFC North and the forecast came in: They were gonna play with the temp around zero, colder than in the legendary days of the Purple People Eaters. If I were a true Viking fan and cold-weather football lover, I had to go.

At -4, this became my coldest game ever, breaking my record of upper-single-digits at a 2004 Packers-Jaguars tilt, and even the -1 staying outside at Boston’s for a radio station promotion during the 2007 NFC title game. Wearing five layers on top, four on my lower half, three scarves, four socks, and clutching hand warmers in my gloves, I settled into my location in the east end zone, facing the wind and the Minneapolis skyline but strategically in the sun. My feet notwithstanding, I remained mostly well-insulated.

Would years of indoor football bring a small crowd? Nope: a sellout. The billowing breath from the surrounding fans reminded me of those film clips, the muffled claps sounding of Lambeau. I never imagined I would share a historic Vikings weather game with 50,000 hearty folks, when this team should not have been good enough to be in such a position. They were just good enough to earn me my first in-person heartbreaker moment as I had a clear view from across the length of the field of Blair Walsh’s field goal sailing left.

I spent five hours in below-zero Upper Midwestern weather to ultimately watch the Vikings painfully lose an important game – I must be a die-hard fan after all. Skol.