Happy Groundhog Day!!

He's already come out, but they have a live webcast of it now (so if you're up at 5am next year, you can see it for yourself)!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... c=fb&cc=fp
Punxsutawney Phil Sees Six More Weeks Of Winter
by Mark Memmott
February 2, 2012

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tho ... A_Facebook
7 Things You Didn’t Know About Groundhogs
By Jason G. Goldman | February 2, 2012

3. Baby groundhogs! Infants stick around home for only about two to three months after being born in mid-April, and then they disperse and leave mom’s burrow.
4. Family values. In general, groundhog social groups consist of one adult male and two adult females, each with an offspring from the previous breeding season (usually female), and the current litter of infants.
5. Medical models. Groundhogs happen to be a good animal model for the study of hepatitis B-induced liver cancer.
6. Look up! Though they spend most of their time on or under the ground, groundhogs can also climb trees.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/km34m37730321vn6/

http://www.livescience.com/18257-ground ... egend.html
Groundhog Day: Phil's Myth Stretches Back Centuries
Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 01 February 2012

In fact, relying on rodents as forecasters may date back to the early days of Christianity in Europe, when clear skies on Candlemas Day (Feb. 2) were said to herald cold weather ahead. In Germany, the tradition morphed into a myth that if the sun came out on Candlemas, a hedgehog would cast its shadow, predicting snow all the way into May. When German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, they transferred the tradition onto local fauna, replacing hedgehogs with groundhogs.

This year will be Phil's 126th prognostication. Phil's supporters insist that he's preternaturally accurate at predicting winter's duration, but statistics don't quite bear out that claim.

Happy Groundhog Day! Phil emerged from his burrow, did not see his shadow and predicted an early spring! Maybe? We're looking at a neutral El Nino which means a wetter spring and slightly above normal temps (3 month outlook for Bailey and Evergreen from NOAA).

(A=Above Chance, B=Below Chance, EC=Equal Chance of A, B, and N - Normal Chance)
www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictio...ooks/color/page2.gif

Then again, maybe he's just wrong.

Groundhog Day 2019: How often has Punxsutawney Phil been correct?
By Leigh Morgan
Posted February 2, 2019 9:04 AM

The day meteorologists love to hate is here. It’s Groundhog Day, so Punxsutawney Phil was again forced from his hidey-hole on Saturday (Feb. 2) to predict whether spring is just around the corner or six weeks in the future.

For 2019, Phil might be the darling of many. He predicted an early spring, which is unusual for him.

The groundhog uses his shadow to predict the onset of spring, but he might want to reconsider his methodology. His shadow has been correct only about 40 percent of the time in the past 10 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Researchers have compared U.S. temperatures with Phil’s forecasts all the way back to 1887.

The agency’s National Centers for Environmental Information says Phil’s prediction skills are iffy at best.

Groundhog Day by The National Centers for Environmental Information