How's the Weather

I am writing this on a beautiful sunny day after shoveling the 4.5 inches of snow we received last night and watching the remainders under what was shoveled melt. I have two children currently inside finding many things to entertain themselves and one still outside throwing snowballs with other gathered neighborhood kids. It is technically the middle of the school week, but it is a snow day. It probably could have been a 2 hour delay today, but I don't make these decisions, so snow day it is.

Yesterday was Groundhogs' Day. Personally, I think Groundhog's Day is a bunch of nonsense. Trent teases me about my attitude and conversely thinks it is a great holiday, one of the top 3 in February easily. Hee hee. I still watched the festivities with the kids yesterday while they got ready for school. At 7:00, the announcer for the Weather Channel said that Phil would emerge from his hole in 30 minutes. I thought to myself, how do they know he will emerge in 30 minutes? Oh, that's right, they know, because they will pull the poor groundhog out of his artificial stump in 30 minutes. In fact, how do they know there is going to be a Punxsutawney Phil in that stump if they don't place it in there earlier? Has anyone been there in the off season and seen Phil out and about? At 7:30, they pulled Phil out of his hole. He didn't want to come out. Imagine that, the groundhog didn't want to come out of the artificial heated stump it is hanging out in and go out in the cold weather where thousands of people are standing around with lights and cameras etc.. Anyhow, Phil's handlers (that is right, Punxsutawney Phil has handlers) placed him on top of this stump, and a bunch of men in black top hats and bow ties gathered around while one looked Phil in the eye and conversed with him. This man then declared (in rather amusing speech I must say) that Phil saw his shadow and there would be 6 more weeks of winter. Phil saw his shadow on a morning where the sun was barely coming up and there was full cloud cover. It is far more likely that the men in black top hats and bow ties (Hey! Men in black..........) knew what the upcoming forecast looked like and therefore made sure Phil said there would be 6 more weeks of winter.

I know, I know. Bah humbug. Well, in further support, the Weather Channel reporter said similar things about the cloud cover and lack of light to provide a shadow after saying she didn't mean to blow the lid off the whole thing? What whole thing? Could she mean the whole concept that a rodent pulled out of an artificial den can't predict the weather?

In addition to the 6 to 8 inches of snow we received Saturday and the 4 or so we received last night, we are expecting a significant storm this weekend. The only question is how much snow we will get out of it at this point. One of the moms at school pick up yesterday mentioned she has a friend at the weather service who said that IF the storm coming up from the South and the building nor' easter converge, we could get at least 3 feet of snow. This is still a hypothetical scenario, but even if it doesn't happen, we are expecting snow again this weekend. Trent said I disrespected the ground hog and now look what is happening. I talked to the neighbor about the expected upcoming storm last Saturday while shoveling snow, so I think the ground hog and my feelings about its ability to predict the weather have nothing to do with the string of snow we are having. You can all decide for yourselves.

I should note that the concept of Ground Hogs day goes back to the middle ages in Germany where people would gather around and pull a groundhog out of its hole to see if it saw its shadow. Now, their torches created enough artificial light that it is hard to know about the whole shadow thing...... O.k., only kidding about the torches and stuff. They did used to have a tradition upon which Ground hog's Day is based, but it involved the groundhog coming out on its own.