Unless you’ve been living in a hole you know that Groundhog Day took place on February 2nd.
This year the groundhog (Punxsutawney Phil ) saw his shadow which supposedly means 6 more weeks of winter. Which got me to thinking (yes I was drinking a beer at the time). How in the heck did we come up with this tradition of forecasting the weather by having an animal look for its shadow ? So I put on my detective hat and looked for the answers.
My first question was why on February 2nd ? That seems like a somewhat arbitrary date. Why not February 1st or something. Well it happens that February 2nd is exactly half way between the first day of winter and the first day of spring. I’m not sure what happens in a leap year because that extra day probably screws up the calculations.
On to my next question. Why a groundhog ? This took a bit more of research (and another beer). It turns out that Germans had a tradition going back hundreds of years where they would celebrate the half way point of winter by drinking beer (big surprise) and pulling a hedgehog out of a hole. If they saw its shadow it meant more winter. Hedgehogs soon began to hate February 2nd.
Zoom forward a few hundred years to when the German colonists came to America. They brought many of their traditions with them but when they went to grab a hedgehog on February 2nd , they came up short. It seems that the old world hedgehogs had somehow got the word out to their new world cousins and no hedgehogs could be found. So they looked for some other animal to play the shadow game with. Enter the groundhog..
Here are some other Groundhog Day factoids:
A groundhog and a woodchuck are the same animal. You know…How much ground could a groundhog hog if a groundhog could hog ground.
Over the past 10 years, the rodent groundhog/woodchuck has a 39% success rate in forecasting the weather. While that number sounds low, it is probably still ahead of most local television weather forecasters.
Punxsutawney Phil’s full name is actually “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary.”
The name ‘woodchuck’ actually gets its name from the North American Indian legend of ‘Wojak’ The legend goes back hundreds of years ago to a bald headed woodchuck who liked lollipops.
For the other 364 days of the year, Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary lives in a climate controlled home in the town library. He enjoys reading mysteries and vegetarian cooking books.
In keeping with the February 2nd tradition, I snuck outside at 1:30 and looked for my shadow. I saw it. From looking at my shadow I couldn’t tell if it meant more winter, but I could tell that I needed another beer.
