The Groundhog's Day

Happy Candlemas, everyone! It's 43 degrees here this morning and the sun is a nice golden color, with n'ary a cloud in the sky. The garden has flooded once more with all the snowmelt.

So naturally, everyone's favorite weather hog, groundhog Phil of Punxsutawney, PA has predicted another six weeks of winter. Everything about Phil is here.

Poor Phil, I hope they let him crawl back into bed when the party's over. Otherwise, he'll be asked to take a side in the big Presidential throw-down. It might be hard for a simple groundhog to get back to sleep though, once he realizes its also Mardi Gras weekend.

Groundhog's Day

Cape Cod Bay, from Rock Harbor Beach, Orleans MA.

So, here it is, the second of February. The predictions from Punxsutawney Phil and others this year have reported no shadows seen, and so call for only two more weeks of winter. Have these groundhogs seen, I wonder, An Inconvenient Truth? Despite my own fears about global warming, only two more weeks of winter--after it arrived here so late this year--seems a little "pie in the sky" to me. We'll see...


I couldn't remember the last time the groudhog didn't see his shadow (I always assumed with all the paparazzi flashbulbs that he'd always see it!), so I looked back at the stats, and it turns out that Phil has predicted an early spring only 14 times over the last 119 years!

Interestingly enough, in 1942, this famous (and apparently immortal) groundhog saw only a partial shadow, so as not to tip off Hitler and his pals one way or another about the weather.