But do we trust him as temperatures soar to upper 70s?
Okay Campers, time to rise and shine! Don’t forget your booties because it’s cold out there! According to our squirrelly sibyl, the nation awaits another six weeks of winter before the coming of spring.
Or will it? For the coming week Dallas is predicted to experience highs of 82 degrees, while the weekend cools down from showers. In the face of this forecast, anyone denying spring seems to be in as deep of a hole as a groundhog’s.
It turns out that, horror of horrors, Punxsutawney Phil, seer of seers, is actually wrong about his prognostications most of the time. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, Phil has only made correct predictions, “only three of the past ten years, or only 40% of the time.”
Not only that, but his failures have sent other adherents of our groundhog augurs looking for a new figurehead. One such branch from Quarryville, Pennsylvania have held to the predictions of one Octorario Orphie, the taxidermied remains of the groundhog that rivalled Phil’s dominance in his heyday.
Whilst I prefer the shadow of a live groundhog to a stuffed one anyday, our struggles with the weather do provoke great frustration with our beloved woodchuck. The recent snowstorm has upended entire class schedules, leaving teachers in a bind as to how to reschedule and reorganize, while also putting a huge damper on our own groundhog festivities.
Considering that, “Phil predicts more winter far more often than he predicts early spring,” according to NBC Philadelphia, and that Phil is right only 40% of the time, there is actually great cause for hope. If our groundhog predicts early winter often, and is wrong most of the time, it follows that we can hope every year for the arrival of spring, heralded by wildflowers and attended by emerald grass.
With regards to Phil, it doesn’t take a Time Lord to consider how much work our rodent friend undergoes just to give us the weather. Where once German immigrants looked to bears and badgers, now the groundhog has his search for a girlfriend cut short so he can talk about his shadow.
Barring any Valentine’s day shenanigans, none of us have to fear being snatched from our beds and hoisted in front of our friends, while newsmen point cameras in our face–nor of exploding in a car with one of these newsmen.
In the aftermath of the Groundhog festivities, let’s be thankful for hope of an early spring by going and seeing our own shadow mingled with that of friends. And while we frolic outside, let’s be thankful for Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who gave us the weather, a spectacular movie and a special celebration.
In the meantime, scientists are baffled trying to replicate the elixir of life that has preserved Phil to the age of 140. When asked for a comment, Phil politely explained, “squeak squeak squeakity, squeaky squeak squeak.”