Iori Yamamoto
On the 2nd of February, the meteorological fate of North America was decided by a rodent emerging from a tree stump. What else could this be but Groundhog Day, the annual celebration held in the United States and Canada.
The event goes as follows: a groundhog comes out of its burrow after sleeping through winter. It looks down at the ground, and one of two things could happen. One, it sees its shadow. Two, the cloudy sky prevents any shadow from being seen. Supposedly, if the shadow is seen, winter will continue for another six weeks. If not, spring is said to arrive early.
The origins of Groundhog Day is a Catholic festival, candlemas. This involved various traditions to do with the end of winter, including a prediction of how early it will end. One saying states that “For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, so far will the snow swirl in May”. Pennsylvanian Germans would also rely on a badger for predicting the weather, which over time came to become the groundhog.
One groundhog has become the most famous for this tradition: Punxsutawney Phil of Punxsutawney, Philadelphia. This year, Phil has seen its shadow for the third year in a row, as he communicated to the president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club in ‘Groundhogese’, predicting a long winter. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club was founded in 1886, and Phil has been making predictions about the weather every year since, staying alive with the help of a yearly drink of an ‘elixir of life’, which according to the Groundhog Club “magically gives him seven more years of life”. Clearly, there is some suspension of disbelief here. But could Phil really have predictive powers? His past 136 years of predictions suggest otherwise. The Stormfax Weather Almanac has shown that Phil has only predicted the weather correctly about 39% of the time. Contrary to this, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club claims on their website a 100% accurate prediction rate.
Although the tradition may seem like harmless fun to many, some at the animal-rights ground PETA argue that this treatment of Phil should stop. They argue on their website that the “cruel” event could “pose a risk to the animals and their handlers” as well as “trigger stress-induced disorders in animals”. According to them, a more 21st-century approach to a weather prediction festival would involve an animatronic groundhog, using AI to predict the weather.
Despite some animal-rights objections to Groundhog Day and confusion from many about if a 136-year-old groundhog can really predict the weather, the celebration is one that marks the end of the colder months and is a staple of February in North America. It is another quaint tradition that makes little sense but is a time for people to celebrate the nearing end of winter while celebrating and welcoming spring.
Iori Yamamoto