In the coming days, Tropical Storm Helene is set to hit either the West Coast of Florida or the Panhandle before continuing on a path that is projected to take it up through Atlanta or the Carolinas. While the impact on the NFL and fantasy football is low on the relative list of priorities when either a hurricane or tropical storm is set to hit, it often does play a role.
Let’s examine Tropical Storm Helene’s projected path as of Wednesday morning and whether any NFL games might be impacted.
What Impact Could Tropical Storm Helene Have on NFL Games in Week 4?
Current projections for Tropical Storm Helene have it potentially reaching hurricane status by the time it hits Florida. For now, it remains classified as a tropical storm and may remain that way throughout.
The current forecast paths have Helene making landfall sometime around Thursday afternoon or evening.
The forecast model then has the storm progressing up through the Atlanta region overnight into Friday morning before heading inland through the Tennessee area and toward St. Louis. However, it’s worth noting that other Spaghetti models have the storm progressing up the East Coast before heading out into the Atlantic in the areas of Virginia, Maryland, Philadelphia, or New Jersey.
From a pure NFL perspective, the majority of disruption in the Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee areas should be on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Therefore, it shouldn’t impact any of those teams in terms of being in the area on Sunday. Where there could be disruption is if there is damage in the surrounding areas of the stadiums.
Of the teams most likely to be impacted by that projected path, only the Atlanta Falcons are at home this weekend. Therefore, we shouldn’t see major disruption. Even if the storm continued in-land, it would likely head toward Kansas City for Sunday, but they are on the road in Los Angeles.
The path up the East Coast would potentially have a more wide-ranging impact on NFL games. Both the Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets are at home this Sunday and could see impact in terms of adverse weather during that game. The level of the storm will likely have dropped, so the overall impact should not be that we see games canceled, but it could be very wet and windy.
Other games that could be impacted are the ones being hosted by the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While neither is likely to still be dealing with adverse weather directly by Sunday, they could have their games disrupted by damage from the weather or storm surges over the next 48-72 hours.
At this stage, we cannot predict much in terms of potential impact. However, fans and fantasy managers will need to be alert heading into the weekend in case there is an impact. At this stage, the two games most in danger of having a direct weather concern on Sunday are in Baltimore and New Jersey.