Tomorrow the second, is Groundhog Day, a tradition observed in the United States and Canada. It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and sees its shadow, it will be frightened by its shadow and retreat to its den and winter will go on for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow, spring will arrive early.

Before the carping begins, I know that a marmot is not the same as a groundhog, but I do not have a photo of a groundhog. Usually in cases like these, I go to Unsplash, a website where I can get beautiful, free photos, but going there for this post I noticed that they had introduced Unsplash+, a for hire version of the regular service. I was miffed, since the most beautiful picture of the bunch was behind this new paywall. It showed a perfectly focused groundhog peering through blurred tall grasses. Further examination found that in addition to real groundhogs, also present were marmots and ground squirrels, all purporting to be groundhogs. Their paywall was easy to circumvent, and since I was already on unsteady moral ground. So, I figured my marmot pic was good enough.

All of this inside baseball gymnastics is merely preamble to today’s weather forecast, sunny and 65 ºF. Tomorrow should be almost as good too. In this age of global warming, I think that Groundhog Day is a bit past its prime. In honor of this seasonal change, I have turned off the artificial snow that has been blowing across this blog since last year. Besides in a few weeks, we will be heading south to Padre Island, where it will be sunny and warm, I hope. I just wish that I do not have to do this whole Groundhog Day thing again and again.

PS — Yesterday, marked the 42nd anniversary of a historic snowstorm in Saint Louis. In 1982, the area areas saw twenty inches of snow, leaving schools, businesses, and offices closed for a week. This storm started as a relatively weak storm, but it did manage to bring really warm and moist air into our area from the south. At the same time, there was really a strong blast of arctic air that was coming down from the north and those two colliding together right on top of the Saint Louis region that resulted in a tremendous amount of precipitation, read thunder-snow. We enjoyed the snow day week by cross country skiing in Forest Park. We went to the zoo, got in and enjoyed the sealions who were loving it.