My first Groundhog’s Day, February 2, 1947, I was forty days old in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 301 Foundry Street. The less grand side of town. Big old Victorian owned by salt of the earth grandparents. Now a parking lot for a community college.
Not many years later my uncle took me out hunting for the meteorological rodents. Technique was, best I could tell, park your car by the side of the road, walk across fields until a nine-year-old gets tired. Then stop suddenly, smell the air, then sit down and start scanning the green grass looking for a little brown spot to pop out. That’s when you pop him! You need a rifle and a scope and a flask. No dogs. And if you get a shot at a pheasant, take it.
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My mother’s family were coal miners.
Her uncle was a big shot, who owned a strip-mining company buying $100,000 pieces of mountain top removal equipment. Lot of money in the 1950’s.
Grandpa had a hole in a hill. Iron rails went into the hole, a creaky cart pulled by a aged grey donkey. Grandpa would drop the ore into a sluice which filled a big red dump truck. Then he personally delivered the coal to the basements of his customers. He had something like a newspaper route.
My grandpa was not a big shot.
Point is this. From somebody who knows, somebody who’s been there. The idea a rodent can predict the weather weeks in advance is vastly more credible than the idea of “clean coal.”
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During the annual Groundhog Day ceremony Friday morning – today 2/2/2024 – Pennsylvania’s most famous rodent, Punxsutawney Phil, will forecast either six more weeks of winter, if he sees his shadow. Otherwise, it’s spring!!! The “forecast” happens at sunrise. Previous Phils have, back to 1887, predicted more weeks of winter 106 times and an early spring only 20 times. I may be wrong.
Several years’ results were not recorded.
All that panning for gold.