Groundhog's Day: The Shadow Knows

Matt Domino offers a brief tribute to Groundhog's Day 2012 as well as why Punxsutawney Phil might just be full of it.




Happy Groundhog's Day, my Puddlers. Those of you who listened to Puddles of My Podcast Season 2, Episode 1, will know that Groundhog's Day cracked my Top Five list of holidays. I explained my reasoning on why Groundhog's Day is one of my favorite holidays in depth during that podcast so if you want to know all about it, you can listen and download here.

However, it has been truly amazing today to see the amount of quotes from the movie Groundhog's Day being thrown around. That movie has become so ingrained in our culture that its incredible. Today, as in the movie, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from the ground and saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter. Now, I don't know if any of you have noticed, but this has been the mildest winter (northeast bias speaking) in a long, long time. I don't know if I've even felt uncomfortably cold once. My landlord keeps the heat cranked up so the pipe that runs through my room and all the other heating areas of my apartment are radiating a very unnecessary level of warmth—you have to love waking up to a dried, nearly bloody nose every morning! So I've been keeping the windows open and letting that steady, low-40's mild winter air blow in. It's been a joy.

Basically what I am saying is that you should never, ever just trust the opinion of just one groundhog. When looking for your yearly prediction of whether spring is coming or winter is continuing on, you have to take a look at the whole panel of groundhogs.

As you can see, the majority of groundhogs in 2012 did NOT see their shadow, indicating that we will have an early spring. In fact, only Punxsutawney Phil, Balzac Billy from Alberta, Canada, and Malverne Mel from Malverne, New York, were the only groundhogs to predict "six more weeks of winter." Last year, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring and we all know that last winter was one of the more brutal winters in recent memory. That result might indicate that this year we should tell Punxsutawney Phil to shove his prediction up  his ass, but in 2011 he was in the majority of groundhogs, so perhaps we can't truly fault him.

All I know is that it seems like Punxsutawney Phil is more wrong than he is right. I poked my head out of my hole today (my bedroom) and you know what, I did see my shadow and I said, "Fuck it, I smell spring in the air already." So that's my prediction. However, if you want a rodent prediction, I'd say go with Jimmy the Groundhog, he seems to be right on the money.