September 2026 · Weather Records

The Windiest Kickoffs We've Ever Recorded

Wind is the sneaky one. It doesn't show up on the radar like a big green rain blob, but a steady 30 or 40 mph wind can turn a football into a paper airplane. These are the five windiest kickoffs we've ever measured, ranked by the strongest sustained wind during the game (not a single gust, a wind that just kept blowing).

The short version: the windiest game on record hit a sustained 44.4 mph in Laramie, Wyoming, in 2008. Like everything on this site, this list got reshuffled after we fixed a weather-timing bug (the story's in this post). Wind's main effect survived the fix just fine: it still makes kickers a little worse, just not by much.

Windiest kickoff on record44.4 mph

Games with 20mph+ sustained wind707

Average wind, all games9.6 mph

FG% in calm vs. 20mph+ wind73.7% → 73.4%

The end zone and stands at Wyoming's War Memorial Stadium under a big sky with puffy clouds. — Wyoming's War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, home of the windiest kickoff in our records. Looks calm here. Don't be fooled. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

The 5 windiest kickoffs on record

The strongest sustained wind during the game. Games under a roof don't count, since the wind never reached the field.

Date	Matchup	Score	Wind	Venue
Oct 11, 2008	Utah @ Wyoming	40–7	44.4 mph	War Memorial Stadium, WY
Nov 12, 2011	Wyoming @ Air Force	25–17	41.9 mph	Falcon Stadium, CO
Sep 1, 2023	Southern Utah @ Arizona State	21–24	40.6 mph	Mountain America Stadium, AZ
Dec 23, 2009	Oregon State @ BYU	20–44	36.8 mph	Sam Boyd Stadium, NV
Sep 2, 2016	Weber State @ Utah State	6–45	36.7 mph	Maverik Stadium, UT

Wyoming shows up twice, on opposite ends

Wyoming played in two of the five windiest games ever recorded. It got blown out in one (40–7 to Utah, in 44.4 mph wind) and won the other on the road at Air Force (25–17, in 41.9 mph). That Air Force game also gave this list its most ridiculous stat: Air Force finished with negative one passing yard. For the whole game. To be fair, Air Force's triple-option offense barely throws in any weather, so the wind only gets partial credit. But negative-one is negative-one.

Air Force football players in blue run onto the field through an inflatable tunnel in front of a big crowd. — Air Force takes the field at Falcon Stadium in 2012. Its triple option barely throws the ball, which explains a lot about that negative-one. Photo: Michael Kaplan, U.S. Department of Defense (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

The record-holder tells a different story. In the single windiest game we've got, Utah threw for a totally normal 132 yards on the road and rolled Wyoming 40–7. So extreme wind can wreck a passing game, but it doesn't always, and the windiest game of all isn't even the one where it did.

That's why we don't make big claims from five crazy afternoons. They can point in five different directions. The real answer, measured across the whole archive, is in the full weather research.

See the full top 50 on the Rankings page, or check this week's forecast for wind heading into upcoming games.