Groundhog
So, as you no doubt read on Thursday, Punxsutawney Phil issued the following proclamation:
"As I look at the crowd on Gobbler's Knob
Many Shadows do I see
So six more weeks of winter it must be."
Huh.
Now, the historical record of groundhog predictions is full of strange little notes hinting that the doings of the people of Punxsutawney are secretly far more interesting than what is reported in the news.[1] Here is a nice stretch of years from that file:
1934 No Shadow.
1935 Saw Shadow at 9:11 AM.
1936 Saw Shadow at 10:27 AM.
1937 Saw Shadow at 9:09 AM; Unfortunate meeting with a skunk.
1938 Saw Shadow at 9 AM; Blackest shadow in history.
1939 Saw Shadow at 9:10 AM.
1940 Saw Shadow at 9 AM; Pictured with first Groundhog Day Queen, Miss Margaret Hunam.
1941 Saw Shadow at 4:25 PM; Six Groundhog Girls.
1942 Partial Shadow at 7:40 AM; "War clouds have blacked out parts of the shadow." ("The Spirit," Feb. 2, 1942).
1943 Groundhog didn't make an appearance; need to rely on Quarryville's prediction.
1944 Saw Shadow at 9:10 AM.
Notice the capitalization of "Shadow".
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club are people comfortable with a little weirdness -- they make their living off of it, even. By the time you have taken an old folk belief about burrowing mammals and turned it into a huge affair that requires a dozen men in top hats to pull a marmot out of a stump, and when you have committed to the assertion that there is Only One Groundhog to the extent that you ritualistically feed it a longevity elixir every summer -- at that point it's not such a big leap to all sorts of things.
So we can imagine that eventually we'll see:
2012 Saw several Shadows at 7:26 AM.
2013 No Shadow.
2014 Saw multiple Shadows at 8:12 AM; Unusual weather predicted.
2015 Saw Shadow at 7:50 AM; Not shaped like groundhog.
2016 No Shadow.
2017 Saw Shadow; Looked like Phil, but gestured frantically. Very bad weather predicted.
2018 No Shadow.
2019 No Shadow.
2020 No Shadow; Longest streak of early spring predictions on record.
2021 Saw Shadow at 3:17 PM; Missing shadow had been stolen by Quarryville and recovered through subterfuge from town hall basement. Delay due to last-minute difficulties with reattachment. New locks put on Phil's room in the Punxsutawney library; background checks required for all employees.
[1] I love this kind of presentation of information. Note the nice summary at the end:
SAW SHADOW 98
NO SHADOW 15
NO RECORD 10
The wikipedia article for Phil starts out with the pleasingly Wikipedian sentence "Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania." Unfortunately it just doesn't rise/descend to the level of sincere weirdness in presenting information that you get elsewhere. I had been hoping for something like the timeline and statistics in the article on the Gävle Goat (you really should go look at that, especially the wonderful table at the end), since all they would have to do is copy Punxsutawney's own records. But no, they cleaned the weirdness out of it (presumably it was "not encyclopedic") and failed to put the summary in a table. Darn. At least we learn that, by one calculation, Phil is correct a stunning 39% of the time. Unless the calculations were overly screwy, after 115 years, that's probably significant, right?
"As I look at the crowd on Gobbler's Knob
Many Shadows do I see
So six more weeks of winter it must be."
Huh.
Now, the historical record of groundhog predictions is full of strange little notes hinting that the doings of the people of Punxsutawney are secretly far more interesting than what is reported in the news.[1] Here is a nice stretch of years from that file:
1934 No Shadow.
1935 Saw Shadow at 9:11 AM.
1936 Saw Shadow at 10:27 AM.
1937 Saw Shadow at 9:09 AM; Unfortunate meeting with a skunk.
1938 Saw Shadow at 9 AM; Blackest shadow in history.
1939 Saw Shadow at 9:10 AM.
1940 Saw Shadow at 9 AM; Pictured with first Groundhog Day Queen, Miss Margaret Hunam.
1941 Saw Shadow at 4:25 PM; Six Groundhog Girls.
1942 Partial Shadow at 7:40 AM; "War clouds have blacked out parts of the shadow." ("The Spirit," Feb. 2, 1942).
1943 Groundhog didn't make an appearance; need to rely on Quarryville's prediction.
1944 Saw Shadow at 9:10 AM.
Notice the capitalization of "Shadow".
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club are people comfortable with a little weirdness -- they make their living off of it, even. By the time you have taken an old folk belief about burrowing mammals and turned it into a huge affair that requires a dozen men in top hats to pull a marmot out of a stump, and when you have committed to the assertion that there is Only One Groundhog to the extent that you ritualistically feed it a longevity elixir every summer -- at that point it's not such a big leap to all sorts of things.
So we can imagine that eventually we'll see:
2012 Saw several Shadows at 7:26 AM.
2013 No Shadow.
2014 Saw multiple Shadows at 8:12 AM; Unusual weather predicted.
2015 Saw Shadow at 7:50 AM; Not shaped like groundhog.
2016 No Shadow.
2017 Saw Shadow; Looked like Phil, but gestured frantically. Very bad weather predicted.
2018 No Shadow.
2019 No Shadow.
2020 No Shadow; Longest streak of early spring predictions on record.
2021 Saw Shadow at 3:17 PM; Missing shadow had been stolen by Quarryville and recovered through subterfuge from town hall basement. Delay due to last-minute difficulties with reattachment. New locks put on Phil's room in the Punxsutawney library; background checks required for all employees.
[1] I love this kind of presentation of information. Note the nice summary at the end:
SAW SHADOW 98
NO SHADOW 15
NO RECORD 10
The wikipedia article for Phil starts out with the pleasingly Wikipedian sentence "Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania." Unfortunately it just doesn't rise/descend to the level of sincere weirdness in presenting information that you get elsewhere. I had been hoping for something like the timeline and statistics in the article on the Gävle Goat (you really should go look at that, especially the wonderful table at the end), since all they would have to do is copy Punxsutawney's own records. But no, they cleaned the weirdness out of it (presumably it was "not encyclopedic") and failed to put the summary in a table. Darn. At least we learn that, by one calculation, Phil is correct a stunning 39% of the time. Unless the calculations were overly screwy, after 115 years, that's probably significant, right?