PHOTO: Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-predicting groundhog of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
A little calendar reminder popped up on my computer yesterday.
“Groundhog Day, Tomorrow, United States”
February 2 occurs all around the globe, but apparently Groundhog Day does not. It’s purely an American thing.
Which might seem like yet another reason for us Americans to act smug and superior.
But maybe we’re just a few centuries behind the times? Allowing a groundhog to predict the pending weather, depending on whether or not he sees his shadow?
And how do we know it’s not a girl groundhog? More about that, later.
Regarding the apparent fact that Americans are stuck in the 1600s, we have the following poem by John Ray, dated 1678:
If Candlemas day be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight
If on Candlemas day it be showre and rain
Winter is gone and will not come again
Or an even earlier verse, written by John Skelton in 1523:
Men were wonte for to discerne
By Candlemas day what wedder shulde holde
No mention here of a groundhog, but the day celebrated as Candlemas in Great Britain — and as Lichtmess in Germany — did occur on February 2, and obviously that was the day for discerning ‘what wedder shulde holde’ for the coming weeks. Proper spelling be damned.
The Germans, in particular, assigned the Lichtmess weather prediction duties to a shy animal that could believably be afraid of its own shadow: the Dachs — the badger.
Apparently, when Germans were settling in Pennsylvania during the 1700s, badgers were scarce, but groundhogs — which look a little bit like badgers, if you’ve been drinking plenty of good German beer — were easy to find. Much easier to find than a meteorologist.
Speaking of meteorologists, I have typically enjoyed watching female meteorologists on TV, but — being the male chauvinist pig that I am — I have never fully trusted their predictions. Male meteorologists are generally boring to watch, but they seem… I don’t know… more accurate?
So I can understand why the groundhog who makes the weather predictions in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania — the famous groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil — is known to be a male groundhog.
Phil’s celebrity skyrocketed following his appearance in the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day. But despite his fame, his actual weather forecasts have been rather ‘hit-or-miss’.
Other weather-predicting groundhogs handle the duties in various communities around the U.S., including Stormy Marmot, the official groundhog of Aurora, Colorado.
Although Stormy is actually a yellow-bellied marmot, his predictions have been remarkably accurate. When researcher Jeremy Neiman plotted the accuracy of various community groundhogs’ weather predictions, Stormy scored high marks, right up there with Poor Richard, the official groundhog of York, Pennsylvania.
Poor Richard, however, is stuffed.
In spite of lengthy research, I was able to find only one American community that celebrated a female groundhog: Lady Edwina of Essex, in West Orange, New Jersey.
Why the people of West Orange have been putting their faith in a girl groundhog, I am at a loss to understand. But I guess that’s New Jersey for you.
Pagosa Springs has no groundhogs — their range doesn’t extend much farther far west than the Mississippi River — but we do have yellow-bellied marmots, which, if the science is to be believed, are much better at meteorology.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.