Punxsutawney? More Like Punk's A Wrong-y!

So it's been over a week since Groundhog Day. I've been chewing on this all week, trying to figure out who decided it would be fun to use a rodent as a weather forecaster. Yes, I do realize that in this age of information I could probably look it up and know for certain. I, however, find that's not as much fun as speculation and supposition.

I'm guessing some guy named Phil was bored one February first some time ago. He was hanging in his parent's basement and just couldn't decide what to do the next day. It was cold, snowy and pretty much the usual weather pattern for February in Pennsylvania and he thought, "Man, if it was spring, I'd have something cool to do instead of shoveling more snow." This was when Phil got the bright idea to use a gopher to predict how much winter was left in the season.

Sadly, he couldn't locate a gopher, but his friend, Ted, knew where to score a groundhog. He was pretty skittish though and liked to burrow in holes. Another bright idea! He can predict the weather if he sees his shadow when he comes out of the hole in the ground. Unfortunately, the town that Phil lived in only had paved and graveled surfaces and there wasn't anywhere with dirt to dig a hole. This meant that he had to travel to the next town over, Gobbler's Knob (tee hee hee), in order to dig the hole for the ground hog to pop out of. And thus the stupid tradition was born.

The funny thing is there are a lot of people who take this to be fact. If the groundhog sees his shadow there are six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't "winter will soon end". (They don't even give you an actual time frame. Just soon.) Now, I understand that kids take this to be gospel. They have Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter Bunny. A weather predicting rodent isn't that much of a stretch for them. What gets me are the adults that swear that it must be true. Um, yes, it is. It's called, "We are having six more weeks of winter since it's only February and spring doesn't start until March 20th." If you live in New York, or any of the other colder states, you count yourself lucky if you ONLY have six more weeks. We've had snow into April before and let me tell you how much it sucks. (A lot.)

And if you really think about it, doesn't the weather really predict if the rodent will see his shadow? Even a caveman could get this concept. "Sun make shadow on ground, clouds no give shadow on ground." So that means the groundhog really isn't predicting anything and there's a 50-50 chance of a shadow sighting.

Since we're definitely having six more weeks of winter anyway, that means good ol' Punxsutawney Phil doesn't have a 100% success rate. Oh Phil, that's not good for job security! In this economy you better be careful. Before you know it, they'll replace you with an iPad with a Groundhog Day app.