Hi everyone,
Our favorite weather prognosticating groundhog is featured on Weather Underground today. Enjoy reading about him and his devoted caretakers!
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I always forget that “Weather Underground” now refers to an actual weather website, so when I saw the title of your post I thought a groundhog had joined a militant group.
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Ha! You must be about my age.
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He has let us down. Here’s a chunk from our Imbolc event:
Spirit: In the tradition of our Pennsylvania Dutch and germanic ancestors, we now honor our local weather demigod, Punxytawaney Phil.Tomorrow is Groundhog day, and it is a modern spin on an ancient tradition. We can trace the roots of this tradition back to pre-history in europe,where weather for the coming season was predicted at Imbolc by a beaver. It has been a time of bitter cold, extreme snow, wind, and powerful storms. Forty-five minutes north of us, sleeping in his burrow tonight to awaken tomorrow, stands our potential salvation, Punxytawney Phil! We honor him tonight and beg him for an early spring with offering and poem
All:
Punxatawney Phil, your home in the ground
Watcher of seasons, prognostications abound
We know tomorrow you rise from your hole
To seal our fate, as the weather you control
Grant us your mercy of an early and nice spring
Avoid seeing your shadow, invite in the green
If the earth is ready, if winter has done
Turn our beautiful lands once more towards the sun
By fur and burrow, by apple and hill,
We thank you, O’Groundhog—Punxsutawney Phil.
And then we made offerings of apples and cakes. We left them out for wildlife before he came out of his hole today. But alas….more winter! (And it has been brutally cold!)
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I love the poem - but I am very sorry to learn that winter will continue to keep its icy grip on us. Today is the first day above freezing here, and only by a few degrees.
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There’s no shortage of news about how cold the eastern US has been, while over here it’s been unseasonably warm. I only saw frost two mornings and still have half of my firewood left because we haven’t needed to have fires. There’s only been one windstorm. It’s like we went directly from late fall to early spring.
I was excited at the prospect of six more weeks of “winter.”
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