Will the Real Weather Predictor Please Stand?
It’s the year’s most watched weather forecast and the only animal with its own national holiday. What the devil are we talking about? Groundhog’s Day, and this year we celebrate it on Saturday, February 2nd. This Saturday, like all other years passed, weather predictors will wait to see if Punxsutawney Phil, the only true weather forecasting groundhog, will see his shadow or not, indicating if we really do have another six weeks to wait until spring (which would happen regardless of him seeing his shadow or not!). Besides Punxsutawney Phil and the great Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day, most of us know very little about this holiday. Here are some fun facts about groundhogs and how this quirky tradition got started in the first place.
Seems many look for an excuse to party and the Pennsylvania Dutch (originally from Germany) were no exception. Back in Germany their ancestors started asking the groundhog about spring as an excuse to drink, eat and be merry. German immigrants brought the legend of Candlemas Day to Pennsylvania. The Candlemas legend states, “For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, so far will the snow swirl in May…” Punxsutawney celebrated its first Groundhog Day in the 1800s with the first official trek to Gobbler’s Knob made on February 2, 1887.
Back then farmers didn’t have a scientific way to predict the weather so they left forecasting to plants and animals. Many of these established ways of weather prediction have long been considered old wives’ tales and animal folklore and some American scientists disagreed so vehemently with such methods that in 1890 the National Weather Service started.
While groundhogs are pitiful weather predictors with only a 39% success rate, they excel in other areas. The largest member of the squirrel family, groundhogs can whistle when alarmed and are excellent swimmers and tree climbers. Like other wild animals, their natural inclination is to be quite aggressive, though they can be socialized if raised with lots of human contact. Groundhogs eat lots of greens, fruits and vegetables and are resistant to germs and plagues that wipe out large numbers of wild animals. They hibernate in a deep coma where their body temperature drops to a few degrees above freezing with the heart barely beating. They live an average of 6 to 8 years with fertile adult females reproducing 4 to 9 “kits” or “cubs” every mid-April or May.
Doppler radar or not, thousands of people still turn out to have a few drinks and watch Punxsutawney Phil every February 2nd. Named after King Phillip, Punxsutawney Phil has been predicting the weather for 125 years. Will “the snow swirl in May?” Punxsutawney Phil nor meteorologists really can’t say. But one thing’s for sure, we’ll all be back to raise our glasses among friends and watch for Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow for many years to come.
