Groundhog Day!

Today is the annual celebration which centers on the weather predicting abilities of a rodent named Punxsutawney Phil... it's Groundhog Day!

Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has been the official home of Groundhog Day since it was first celebrated on February 2, 1887.

According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring. Interestingly, the first day of spring is seven weeks away.

The Groundhog Day tradition is based on the Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when candles were blessed and distributed representing how long and cold the winter would be.

Germans expanded on the traditional celebration by choosing an animal (the hedgehog) for predicting weather. Germans who settled in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, switching from hedgehogs to groundhogs -- which are abundant in the state.

Groundhogs (also known as woodchucks) go into hibernation in the late fall and their body temperatures drop significantly, their heartbeats slow to five beats per minute and they can burn up 30 percent of their body fat.

While legend/tradition states that the groundhog emerges to predict the weather, it's actually the male groundhog leaving their burrows seeking a mate!

Punxsutawney Phil was "born" when a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney declared that Phil was America's only true weather-forecasting groundhog.

I can only wonder what predictions Pigeon's famous Racoobuck could have made to put our little community in the national spotlight.