![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well, tomorrow people in various small towns will be observing the behaviour of alliteratively-named critters (Wiretown Willie, etc.) in order to predict when spring will replace winter. Meanwhile Discovery News will probably rerun their smug debunking of the accuracy of this ritual.
Actually, I kind of think they're both wrong. I always assumed the key part of the legend was "sees its shadow, and goes back in, no early spring" and that the underlying idea was that if a cloudy day (no shadows) was still warm enough to bring an animal out of its hole at all, the weather must really be warming up, whereas a groundhog coming out on a sunny day was no biggie and didn't mean anything long term.
Since the forecasting groundhogs don't exactly seem to be living under natural conditions, I doubt their behaviour for forecasting purposes.
Here's the Weather Network's Groundhog Day page.
Actually, I kind of think they're both wrong. I always assumed the key part of the legend was "sees its shadow, and goes back in, no early spring" and that the underlying idea was that if a cloudy day (no shadows) was still warm enough to bring an animal out of its hole at all, the weather must really be warming up, whereas a groundhog coming out on a sunny day was no biggie and didn't mean anything long term.
Since the forecasting groundhogs don't exactly seem to be living under natural conditions, I doubt their behaviour for forecasting purposes.
Here's the Weather Network's Groundhog Day page.
