Okay, guys. Big news: the Groundhog Day groundhogs have spoken, and the majority of them say we officially have six more weeks of winter.

As legend has it, if the groundhog sees its shadow upon emerging from its hole on February 2, we will have six more weeks of winter. If it doesn’t see its shadow, we will have an early spring. However, technically speaking, whether or not the groundhogs see their shadows, we still have six weeks and five days of winter left. So what’s the deal?

To get some answers, I decided to launch a new, [hopefully] recurring OWL blog feature: “OWL Exposé.” I came up with five things you may not know about this odd, annual event, and I’m very excited to share them with you.

Buckle up:

1. There are no less than 19 groundhogs that participate in Groundhog Day prediction festivities across North America, but they don’t always agree. The five Canadian ones I’ve read about online are Balzac Billy (from Balzac, Alberta), Spanish Joe (Spanish, Ontario), Shubenacadie Sam (Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia), Watson Willow (Watson, Saskatchewan), and Wiarton Willie (Wiarton, Ontario). This year, only Balzac Billy predicted an early spring.

2. One of Wiarton, Ontario’s most famous landmarks is a statue of Wiarton Willie — it’s made of limestone and weighs a whopping six tonnes. You can see a picture of it here. (Bonus fact: the actual name of the statue is “Willie Emerging.”)

3. Groundhog Day may be the ancestor of a Celtic festival called Imbolc. According to Wikipedia, “Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens.” However, groundhogs are NOT the ancestors of serpents. There is no relation.

4. The largest Groundhog Day celebration takes place in Punxsutawney (say: “PUNKS-uh-TAWN-ee”), Pennsylvania. The town’s population usually sits at around 6,000 people, but as many as 35,000 have shown up to catch the groundhog. Punxsutawney is also where the first official Groundhog Day took place in 1886.

5. Some places where groundhogs aren’t plentiful substitute other animals for the day. For example, Alaska celebrates Marmot Day and the Denver Zoo in Denver, Colorado, observes Prairie Dog Day.

Also, if you’ll remember from one of my earliest OWL blog posts, the prairie dog looks like this:

Still awesome!

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That’s it for me, guys. I hope you enjoyed this new, wild OWL blog feature. If you did, let me know in the comments. Also, feel free to suggest new subjects for me to check out!

Talk to you soon.

Craig, owlblog@owlkids.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 12:04 pm in Uncategorized.