{"id":38908,"date":"2015-02-02T00:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T08:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=38908"},"modified":"2015-01-31T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T00:37:00","slug":"day-history-february-2nd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/day-history-february-2nd\/","title":{"rendered":"This Day in History: February 2nd"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Day In History<\/a>: February 2, 1886<\/strong>
\n\"groundhog\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day,
\nSo far will the snow swirl until the May.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On February 2, 1887, the first official Groundhog Day featuring a rodent meteorologist at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania occurred. According to long-standing tradition, if on this day a groundhog pops out of his hole and sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of wintry weather. If he doesn\u2019t, it means you can plan on an early spring.<\/p>\n

Groundhog Day harkens back to a time when we lived in closer harmony with the earth and the cycles of the seasons. Many cultures observed some sort of holiday at the beginning of February. The ancient Celts celebrated Imbolc, which morphed into Candlemas as the Christians rose to dominance. This is the midpoint of winter, a time of purification and the first stirrings of new life.<\/p>\n

The first European settlers in Pennsylvania came from Germany, and they brought with them the tradition of using a pretty unremarkable animal, the hedgehog, to predict the weather at Candlemas. Since there was a dearth of hedgehogs in the New World, they made do with the groundhog.<\/p>\n

But why are groundhogs emerging from their nice warm burrows in the dead of winter in the first place? Groundhogs, or woodchucks, hibernate in late fall. In early February, male groundhogs emerge from their burrows \u2013 but it\u2019s not to give humans a head\u2019s up on the long-term forecast; it\u2019s to look for a lady-friend. Once they\u2019ve scratched the itch, they head back underground until March.<\/p>\n

On February 2, 1886, the first Groundhog Day at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania occurred. This was reportedly decided by proclamation from the town\u2019s newspaper editor Clymer Freas, who informed his readers: \u201cToday is groundhog day and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen its shadow.\u201d<\/p>\n

As mentioned, the following year, the first trip to Gobbler\u2019s Knob for Groundhog Day was undertaken by a group who dubbed themselves the \u2018The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.\u201d Freas, de facto leader of the group, declared Phil (I guess they were on a first name basis) the official Punxsutawney Groundhog, and the only one with meteorological super powers.<\/p>\n

Every year, the crowds turning out to see what Phil\u2019s verdict would be grew and grew. Much later, news media from around the world began to report the results. Other towns began staging their own Ground Hog Day celebrations, complete with weather predicting rodents. But Phil remained the biggest star, drawing crowds in the tens of thousands, especially after the release of the movie \u201cGroundhog Day\u201d in 1993. All because a hibernating rodent wakes up in the middle of his winter\u2019s nap looking to get lucky.<\/p>\n

You might be wondering at this point just how accurate these rodents are at predicting weather using the \u201cshadow\u201d tradition. Turns out, not very\u2026 The many incarnations of Punxsutawney Phil (groundhogs only live about 3-6 years in the wild and 10-14 in captivity) has only been accurate about 39% of the time. According to a Canadian study looking at 13 different cities\u2019 groundhogs used for their respective festivals, the net accuracy was only 37%. So we’d do better flipping a coin, but hard to build a party around that, I guess.<\/p>\n

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