The 5min Blog

Many of you may have seen the comedy Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a conceited TV weatherman who is sentenced to live and re-live the same awful day over and over and over. The bad part? He’s snowed in and stuck in Punxsutawney, PA. The good part? Well, at least he learns to pound on the piano and has the lovely Andie MacDowell at his side.

With the (very real) annual Groundhog Day coming up, we thought we’d bring you some background on this quirky climate-happy holiday, noted mostly in North America.

So, what’s all this fuss over a marmot, you ask? According to legend, the timid groundhog is a creature so easily frightened, that it may be scared off by the sight of its own shadow. Hence, when the groundhog peeks out of its burrow on February 2nd – what is traditionally marked as Candlemas Day – and fails to see its shadow due to cloudy weather, winter will soon be gone. If it is sunny and the groundhog sees its shadow, the groundhog will supposedly retreat into its burrow, signaling that winter will continue to linger for six more weeks.

Whether or not you care for marmot predictions or Punxsutawney Phil’s statistics, with global warming already taking its toll, we should all pay a little more attention not just to the weather, but to how our collective behavior may affect it in the long run.

Tags: Candlemas, climate, global warming, groundhog, Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil, shadow, spring, springtime, tradition, WatchMojo, weather, weather lore, weather predictions, winter