Decoding Groundhog Day

By Harriet Cooper

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.

~Patrick Young

After removing my toque, gloves, scarf and parka, I rubbed my hands together, trying to get the circulation going. "I really, really, really hate winter," I said, my fingers tingling as they began to warm up.

Susan, my best friend and an avid cross-country skier, sat across from me in the restaurant. "You are such a wuss," she said. "It's barely minus ten."

I groaned. "That's at least twenty degrees too cold for me." The waiter placed a cup of coffee in front of me and I wrapped my hands around it. "Besides, it's not my fault my hands are always cold. If I lived somewhere warm..."

"...you'd be complaining about the heat," Susan finished. "It's already February. Tomorrow is Groundhog Day and winter is practically over."

"Right. Like some rodent knows more about the weather than we do. If it weren't for reporters trying to take his picture, he'd still be fast asleep in his den."

I took a sip of coffee, savouring the heat flowing into my body. "Now there's a job I'd like. Sleep through the worst of winter, wake up for ten minutes, and then go back to sleep for another month or two."

Susan drank half her coffee before speaking. "Considering how much you hate winter, maybe you were a groundhog in a previous life. Or a bear."

I shivered. "With my luck, it was probably a polar bear."

After breakfast we went for our traditional Sunday morning walk. Too cold to snow that day, what had already fallen on the ground crunched under our feet. With the sun shining, it truly was a beautiful winter day. Not that I would have admitted it to Susan. An hour later, cheeks red with cold, we headed back to my house for something warm to drink.

After unwinding, unzipping and pulling off layers of clothes again, I thought back to our earlier discussion. "Susan, have you ever wondered how many groundhogs are forecasting weather tomorrow across Canada? Is there some kind of Groundhog Weather Network? What happens if one of them says early spring, and the other says long winter? Do they just flip a coin — heads it's spring, tails it's winter?"

Susan shrugged. "I thought you didn't care about groundhogs."

"Well, it is almost a national holiday. Just because I don't think they can predict weather, doesn't mean I'm not curious," I said. "I'm going to check."

Two minutes later we were sitting in my office in front of my computer. A quick Google search brought up pages of sources. I scanned the titles and clicked on one, then another and another.

"I was right about the provinces each having their own groundhog weather forecasters," I said. "Wiarton Willie may be Ontario's most famous prognosticating rodent, but he has a bunch of cousins spread across Canada."

I counted them as I read out their names. "There's Nova Scotia's Schubenacadie Sam, Alberta's Balzac Billy and Manitoba's Winnipeg Willow, the only female. If you're feeling bilingual, there's even Fred from Val-d'Espoir in Gaspésie."

"See," Susan said, "with all those groundhogs, at least one of them has to be right."

I clicked on a couple more articles, skimming their contents. "Aha," I said triumphantly, "Willie and his kin are more lover boy than meteorologist. Our furry weatherman couldn't care less about whether he sees his shadow. He's channeling his hormones. The little guy just wants to get lucky."

I paused to read a bit more. "If it weren't for the publicity and the urging of his handlers, Willie wouldn't be interrupting his annual hibernation for a chance at some nooky until the middle or end of March. If he waited, then his score — meteorologically speaking — would be much higher. He'd probably find more female groundhogs, too."

"So what is his score?" Susan asked, peering at the computer screen.

"Not good," I responded. "Groundhogs have a worse record of predicting the weather than Environment Canada. Willie and his cousins are right only thirty-seven percent of the time. In any other country, they'd have been fired years ago. Here, we take their pictures and splash them across the front page of the newspaper."

Susan shook her head. "You really know how to take the joy out of winter, don't you?

At my grin, she continued. "I guess that means you're not going to be checking out what Wiarton Willie has to say tomorrow?"

"That's exactly what it means," I said. "I'm going to be curled up in bed under a flannel sheet and two polar fleece blankets, wearing my favourite turquoise toque."

"A toque?" Susan interrupted. "You wear a toque to bed?"

"You bet I do. I turn down the thermostat at night to save energy and it gets really cold. The toque is my modern equivalent of a nightcap. Unlike Willie, I don't have a fur coat, but I do have a big orange tabby cat or two nestled beside me to help keep me warm." I paused. "Now that's how to spend a Canadian winter."

I lied. The next morning I did, in fact, get up and check the news to see what Willie had to say. Like millions of other Canadians, I decided that if waiting for a groundhog to declare an early spring gives us even a thin ray of sunshine in the middle of a cold, dark winter, so be it.

Willie predicted an early spring. Environment Canada disagreed. Since I wasn't teaching that day, I went back to bed, complete with toque and a couple of cats. This human groundhog knew we'd have at least another six weeks of winter. Remembering the year I wore turtlenecks into June, I shivered and snuggled deeper under the blankets.

Goodnight Willie and sweet dreams. See you in a month or so.

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