The end is near

Photo courtesy of Huffington Post

Punxsutawney Phil has spoken. His prediction is that spring is coming soon. No six more weeks of winter ahead for us! The furry critter came out of his burrow this morning and didn't see his shadow, so we can get on with planning our spring gardens.

Phil lives in Pennsylvania, of course, and I'm not sure how much validity his prediction has for Southeast Texas. If he had emerged from his burrow in my backyard this morning, he would definitely have seen a shadow. My world is full of bright sunshine. Maybe he would have blinked once and scurried back inside. On the other hand, it is 70 degrees out there. Perhaps he would have just curled up for a nap in the sun.

It seems that all the signs of Nature, not just sleepy groundhogs but also birds, butterflies, flowers, insects and frogs, are pointing toward an early spring. Actually, in my part of the world, we have not had much of a winter, really only three or four weeks when you needed a sweater to go outside, and now that February is here, it seems very unlikely that we will have many - if any - more weeks like that.  

Back in November, I wrote about finding a woolly bear caterpillar at my doorstep and about how the color of it predicted a long, cold winter ahead. Well, the winter that we've actually had has been enough to make me lose faith in woolly bears. In the weeks ahead, we'll see if faith in groundhogs is vindicated.

Did the groundhog see his shadow?

Well, Punxsutawney Phil has spoken and it seems we will have six more weeks of winter. The sleepy rodent was pulled out of his burrow by his official keepers today, saw his shadow and went right back inside. According to his interpreters, that means six more weeks of winter.

Of course, the dirty little secret is that no matter what Phil says, we will have six more weeks of official winter until Earth makes enough of a circuit of the sun to bring it to its vernal equinox on March 20, just over six weeks from now.

But that's only the official date for spring. In my yard, virtual spring has already sprung and my personal groundhog did not see his shadow today because of heavy cloud cover and intermittent rain. In fact, nobody saw his shadow in my yard today.

Personally, I think we may be putting too much responsibility on Punxsutawney Phil's sloping shoulders. This guy agrees with me:

Maybe next year we should let ol' Phil sleep in!

Groundhog day plus one

What did your own personal groundhog have to say about the prospects for an early spring on his big "coming out" day yesterday? Well, I can tell you if there were any of the furry rodents poking their heads out of their hibernation dens yesterday in my area, they most definitely did NOT see their shadow or any other shadow. The sun that would have caused such a shadow to be cast has been in hibernation itself for many days now.

All the same, good old Punxsutawney Phil, the official groundhog of the nation, apparently did see his shadow yesterday, dooming us to six more weeks of winter. His prediction was further confirmed by Big Al the Alligator of Gator Country. Big Al refused to break his hibernation by eating, thus indicating that winter isn't nearly over yet.

It seems to me that every year ol' Phil sees his shadow and scampers back into his den. I ran this theory by AKH (All-knowing Husband) who snorted, "Of course, he does! It's just like the movie Groundhog Day. Where do you think they got that name? It's the same thing every year, over and over and over again. We're in an endless loop."

Of course, AKH is a skeptic when it comes to animals predicting weather - or anybody predicting weather, for that matter. (In fact, come to think of it, he's a skeptic about most things.) After living with him for all these years, I'm afraid a bit of his skepticism has rubbed off on me.

You see, I don't really think it matters what Big Al or PP or the Channel 13 weatherman says. The SUN says that the vernal equinox will come on March 20 this year, and the sun rules. That is the date that winter will end and spring will begin here in the northern hemisphere of our "big blue marble." And that is about six weeks from now.

Hmmm...I guess maybe Phil and Al weren't so far off, after all.