Happy Monday! We here at Your Local Weather Authority hope everyone enjoyed our late-January snowstorm. It’s officially a new month and we’re looking ahead to one of the more bizarre “holidays” we recognize each year: Groundhog Day.
We can trace Groundhog Day back to the German holiday “Candlemas”, which was celebrated on February 2 each year. Revelers used a badger, bear or fox to predict the start of spring, based on whether it was a sunny day or not.
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The Pennsylvania Dutch were immigrants from Germanic-speaking areas of Europe and created the tradition of Groundhog Day. While the first mention of the holiday in the United States was noted in 1840, the celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania did not begin until 1887.
The average attendance for the groundhog’s prediction was 2,000 people up until Bill Murray’s movie “Groundhog Day” debuted in 1993. The celebration is much more popular now, although this year’s celebration will be behind closed doors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The famous groundhog was not named “Phil” until 1961. The tradition holds that Phil is a supercentenarian, although groundhog life expectancy is up to six years in the wild and 14 years in captivity.
Phil has seen his shadow 103 times, predicting six more weeks of winter each time. It’s been cloudy in Punxsutawney on 20 Groundhog Days, with Phil decreeing an early start to spring those years.
According to AccuWeather, the groundhog is accurate 39% of the time with his weather predictions, worse than a coin flip and certainly much worse than Your Local Weather Authority.
It’s looking cloudy in Punxsutawney tomorrow, so Phil will probably say spring is on the way.
If you want to trust a rodent with your forecast, we welcome you to wear shorts and a t-shirt Tuesday. Otherwise, bundle up because we’re forecasting highs in the 30s with strong winds locally.
You don’t even have to wait for Chief Meteorologist Jeff Haniewich to emerge from his burrow for that forecast! It’s available every day on air, on our weather app and at WSLS.com/weather.
Now that I’m done yelling about a rodent trying to take my job, I can tell you more about the forecast in our corner of the Commonwealth!
We’re still dealing with some minor impacts from our recent winter storm. Mountain snow, strong winds and an eventual arctic blast are all expected over the next week. Meteorologist Chris Michaels has everything you need to know in our Monday forecast article.
You can always get specific forecast details for your zone, whether it’s the Roanoke Valley, Southside, the Highlands or elsewhere around Southwest and Central Virginia, anytime at WSLS.com/weather. Know your zone!
In case you missed it, we’re posting great weather and science content on WSLS.com. Here are a few links from the past week to check out:
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-- Justin McKee