The Infamous Groundhog Day

In the middle of all the hub-bub over the blizzard, there is Punxsutawney Phil, that famous predictor of the future of winter weather.

Groundhog Day is celebrated every February 2 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The first Groundhog Day was held in the 1800s when the first official trek to Gobbler's Knob was made on February 2, 1887.

The story is that Punxsutawney Phil, named after King Phillip, had previously been called Br'er Groundhog.

The celebration came with Pennsylvania's earliest settlers. They brought with them the legend of Candlemas Day, which states "For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, so far with the snow swirl in May..."

But National Geographic sort of throws snow on the idea of a Groundhog being the predictor of the weather. It seems that when the Germans came to the "new country" they brought with them the idea of long range weather forecasting with a hedgehog. But no hedgehog could be found in the new country, so they settled on the groundhog.

And the weather for today cancelled the usual Chicago-area Groundhog Day events at the Brookfield Zoo--the second time in the 77-year history of the event.

The difference between a hedgehog and a groundhog—basically, hedgehogs are prickly insectivores, while groundhogs are sort of squirrels and therefore are rodents. Also groundhogs are much larger animals than the hedgehog.