Punxsutawney Predictions

How fitting, I thought, to make the second entry, on the second day of the second month of the year about ‘Groundhog Day.’  Yup, Punxsutawney Phil peeped his weary head, today as we anxiously awaited the rodents prognostication.

As far back as I can remember I have gotten as excited about Groundhog Day as I did about Christmas.  Okay, maybe that’s a stretch but I think you can feel my ongoing anxiety.  One thing you can depend on like clockwork is that I will be all over the weather segment of the local news to see if Phil left his burrow.  Again in 2010, I was not one to disappoint.  Like a child in all of his innocence on the first day back to school following the Christmas break, I couldn’t wait to share with my family the predictions of the one-hundred and twenty-four year old groundhog.  Elated with the news, I catch my son on the way out of the door for school and tell him how the groundhog saw his shadow.  I get the expected response from a deeply engrained member of ‘Generation i’ -- “What does that mean?”  With my excitement bubble now burst, I explain that we will now have to put up with six more weeks of winter.  He then simply says, “I wonder why that is” from a perplex disposition as he shuts the door behind him.

He left me wondering if there is any scientific process that backs Phil’s predictions.  After all, I am daddy.  In a perfect world, I would be able to satisfy all of my children’s curiosities, right?  So I pull out the Google and Bing and see what I can find.  Armed with my coffee and the finally tuned software we refer to as search engines, I begin my brief but nevertheless curious research.

I’ll spare the disappointment that I experienced.  My thirty minute study left me with one conclusion: when my son returns home from school, the answer I’ll have for him is, “Son, we’ll have six more weeks of winter based off of, well, old folklore.”  Then I’ll put my arm around him and we’ll both walk to the kitchen in search of an afternoon morsel with our heads drooped and at an impasse, and I’ll share with him these verses from which we base the off-beat holiday:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If  Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

Candlemas, of course being the tradition the German settlers brought with them to Pennsylvania in the 18th century to celebrate the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  While a hedgehog was used in early tradition in Europe, the Delaware Indians held the woodchuck (from the Delaware Indian pronunciation ‘wojak’) as sacred and believed them to be their ancestors.  The Pennsylvania-settled Germans altered the tradition to now use the sacred woodchuck.

The disappointment is born out of discovering that since the first recorded Groundhog Day using our old pal Punxsutawney Phil (1886), he has an accuracy rate of 39%.  Disheartening to say the least, you know, sort of like when you first found out about Santa.

Oh well, I can walk away from today’s mid-morning excavation with this – the harshness of this winter’s cold spell only has a 39% chance of surviving for another six weeks.  Call me an optimist!

  Check the weather in your area to see if your local cousin of the squirrel will be nibbling away at the foliage in your garden a little earlier than usual, this year.