Groundhog Day: February 2nd 2015

Groundhog Day celebrates the notoriety of the most popular American rodent: the Groundhog. The Bill Murray film, entitled Groundhog Day made the celebrated traditional special day even more noticeable worldwide.

Here in Wisconsin, in Sun Prairie, Mayor Jonathan Freund, during the February 2^nd festivity, leaned toward a groundhog to hear Jimmy the Groundhog's weather prediction and the chubby rodent bit him on the ear!

The most famous American groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, makes the yearly prediction. But is the groundhog as accurate as the Farmer's Almanac, another American icon? There is even a website for Groundhog Day and famous Phil. A team at Washington Post did the math and calculated that the groundhog predictions were accurate for some areas of the United States and inaccurate for others. 

Of course, the prognosticate rodent is a woodchuck that can be found in the forests of North America, especially the Northeast where the tradition began. In the wild, the woodchuck can be considered a pest for gardeners for they burrow and tunnel through the ground and can destroy a garden in short time.

For 2015, Phil saw his shadow, so its six more weeks of winter.

This year, groundhogs made the news and five times not for their weather prediction capability.