Local Saturday - The Frozen Groundhog

Today is Groundhog Day in the United States, where we pull a groundhog out of the ground to predict the weather.   It's purely scientific, of course, and this is how it works:

If the groundhog sees its shadow, we have six more weeks of winter.  If the groundhog doesn't see its shadow, we get an early spring - supposedly.

The groundhog usually sees his shadow, but, according to our Weather Channel, the main groundhog (in Pennsylvania) has only been accurate about 39% of the time.

In 2015, one of our harshest Northeast winters in many years, the ground hog saw its shadow, despite the fact that it was overcast, and a rain/snow mix was moving in.  Somehow, that ground hog almost always sees its shadow.

In 2013, it didn't see its shadow and we still got six more weeks of winter.   The groundhog almost got the death penalty for that one.  (On the other hand, considering how many of my plants groundhogs have destroyed over the years, good thing I wasn't on that jury.)

In 2016, it was unseasonably warm.  2017?  It got up to 42F (5.5 Celsius) at our house yesterday. This post from 2014 shows a more typical February day.

Then there was 2019 and the polar vortex.  We in upstate New York didn't get the brunt of it, but still.  The morning before we set a new record of -10 (-23 C) with gusting winds.

There are multiple predicting groundhogs in the United States, and they even compete with each other.  But this year, the two main groundhogs agreed.

They didn't see their shadow.  An early spring!  Well, since Thursday, this has been proved to be a bit overoptimistic, but some parts of our country are going to see a temperature swing of over 100 degrees between this week and next week.

Of course, since I woke up to plus 3 degrees F this morning (-16 C) we could use an early spring.

Let's cross our fingers!