What does it mean when they say whether or not a groundhog sees his shadow? How would you know whether he seen it or not?! You can't ask him obviously! What if there was a shadow but he never turns his head that way? And are we talking about the groundhog's very own shadow? If so, doesn't that only depend on whether its sunny or not on that particular morning? Can anyone help explain it to me please?
Thank you!!
JD
I live 20 miles from Punxsy and I have no idea how the whole thing works. To be honest I think it's a freakin joke.
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The way I understand it, generally if it's a sunny day they will say Phil sees his shadow, BUT on a cloudy day they say he doesn't.
shareIf that's the case, what the hell do we need a groundhog for. Just look out the window and if it's cloudy out on Feb 2nd, then winter is over and vice versa.
shareIf it is a sunny day then it is assumed he saw his shadow, if it is a cloudy or overcast day then it is assumed he did not see his shadow.
shareBut it doesn't make any sense how's that related to a long winter.
shareit is just and old wives tale.
http://www.groundhog.org/about/history/
Just like supposedly the first 12 days of Jan. are supposed to determine the weather of the following 12 months, i.e. if Jan 5 is windy, then May will be a windy month.
shareso if 8th of jan is typical midwinter snow , ice & rain ....
August will be like that?
Who practices this prediction model exactly?
The thing that's backwards about it (other than, well.. all of it) is that seeing his shadow is a sign of more winter, rather than an early spring.
As mentioned on that webpage; if the groundhog can see his shadow there must be a relatively clear sky (and probably sunshine). Whereas if he can't see his shadow, it must be cloudy.
Clear sky and sunshine vs. a cloudy sky. Which of these seems more indicative of winter to you?
In very cold places in winter, there is a LOT of clear blue skies and sunshine. When it's really really cold, the moisture gets frozen right out of the air.
Source: I lived in northern Minnesota for several years.
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I remember reading about this but it's not ironic rather it's a mixture of tall tale and superstition prescribed onto a rodent's 6th senses.
The idea is that if the Groundhog was tricked into going outside because the sky was clear and the sun was out is one thing but during winter the sun is at an angle where even in midday your shadow his cast onto the ground. When it's actually Springtime, the sun is above your head so when the Groundhog sees that the sunlight created a shadow he knows that the winter sun is still around and more winter weather is abound.
If it is a sunny day then it is assumed he saw his shadow, if it is a cloudy or overcast day then it is assumed he did not see his shadow.
Did you not learn about this in school?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfrq11bowOw
You're thinking again............you got to learn how to just go with the flow.
shareIt's a tradition in Pennsylvania. It has no real bearing on what the rest of the country will experience. I doubt anyone in Palm Springs cares considering it was 75 there today..
shareThey use groundhogs because they were the first mammals to emerge during the winter. The rest is a fallacy that centuries ago people thought accurately predicted the start of spring weather.
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.
But an animal like groundhog can't have any bearing whether there will be 'more winter' or 'less winter', since seasons are not variable, but fixed.
It doesn't matter what a groundhog does, sees or feels (how could it?), the Earth's orbit around sun doesn't change, and thus, seasons remain the same. The brightest point of the year will always be the midpoint of summer, the darkest point of the year will always be the midpoint of winter.
Of course in actual reality (which is where animals live), seasons don't exist. Think about a deer in the forest, unknowingly crossing from one country to another. Do you think the deer knows that happened? No. It's basically 'arbitrary contract' that people agree with, and that maps consequently show, but a border between countries doesn't exist in the nature, because 'border' is not something tangible, it's more like 'ideal' that's based on ideas that have been put on paper. In REALITY, there's just 'forest'.
Now, you can put markers or lines there, you can erect buildings and 'border control' structures, but this fact doesn't change - the border doesn't -really- exist in the nature, even if all that artificial stuff is put there. That stuff is not border per se, it's just 'marker' of the 'idea' of a border.
So when we come back to this 'seasons' thing, they don't REALLY exist in the nature. We can say that winter is when there's snow, and autumn is when leaves change color and detach from trees, but animals don't say these things, they just live in the nature, however the nature may change.
This means that any 'season' stuff is also just arbitrary, artificial and basically just 'an idea', not something tangible.
However, if we want to splice an artificial construct like 'year' into other constructs, like 'parts' that are given names like 'months' and 'seasons', and we want it to not only be symmetrical, but based on the brightness of the light..
.. which would be most logical, since this change creates basically all the other changes (and it's based on the tilting of the planet while it orbits the star called 'sun'), we kind of have to do it like this:
- Take the brightest point and call it midpoint of summer
- Take the dimmest point and call it midpoint of winter
This makes the 12 months and 4 seasons symmetrical (more or less), and it actually also fits the ancient Chinese moon calendar, which was probably calculated this exact way (I didn't even realize this before I had already done the calculation).
Now all we have to do is count 1,5 months to both directions from these points, and we have our 'winter' and 'summer' - both last exactly three months so that the 12 months can be nicely divided to four seasons.
The rest is easy; just count 1,5 months to both directions again, and you get the midpoint of spring and midpoint of autumn. From those midpoints, 1,5 months to both directions shows where 'spring' and 'autumn' are located, and thus our calendar is complete.
If you do it correctly, you get the start point of each season:
Spring: 4th of February
Summer: 5th of May
Autumn: 7th of August
Winter: 7th of November
These movies always tell us that 'May 21st' is somehow the first day of spring. I think the reason is that that's the first time, when there's more light during the 24 hours of a 'day cycle' than darkness.
However, as we can see from this nature and planets' movement-based calculation, that 'May 21st' being the first day of spring is just arbitrary hokum.
It IS interesting, though, that most people do not do this kind of thinking, they can't define the common words they use pretty much every day.
If I ask someone to define something as basic as 'evening' and 'morning', you will be drowned in contradictory definitions. Some people think '5 pm' is evening, and others won't agree.
I solved this puzzle the same way, I took the midpoint of day (12:00 noon) and the midpoint of night (00:00 midnight) and since clock has to be symmetrical, it means both DAY and NIGHT must have equal number of hours.
This dictates that day is 12 hours and night is 12 hours.
Calculating it this way, I tried to figure out when 'morning' starts and when 'evening' starts, and why there's a word for 'afternoon', but not 'aftermidnight', and in some languages, there's 'morning day' but no 'evening night', and so on.
Eventually, I had to give up, because every information contradicts the other information, there IS no clear definition of these words that people use all the time!
So, night begins at 18:00 pm, day also begins at 06:00 am, but the rest is basically just 'user-definable' mess that slides and warps to anything the speaker wants it to be. The moment you try to define it in a solid way, there's always an exception that breaks your definition.
Is morning the 'first half of a day'? But then you can say "three in the morning", which is CLEARLY part of night, not day.
Is evening 'first half of a night'? But no one calls '19:00 pm' 'night', but also, people can say 'let's meet at 17:00 in the evening'. So evening in this case was just part of a DAY, not night.
You can't even make evening begin at 15:00 pm, because that's just too early, it doesn't 'feel' right. So you can't define or pinpoint in any solid way when 'evening' begins or ends, or when 'morning' begins or ends, and yet people use these words all the time.
Considering ALL this..
.. HOW the heck can an animal that has no concept of 'evening', 'season', 'summer' or 'winter' have ANY influence on what happens to seasons, especially considering seasons are FIXED things based on this planet's movement in space?
Does a groundhog have a planet's movement-altering ability? Can it slow down or speed up Earth's orbit around the star called 'sun'?
I really don't understand what magical powers a common animal has - and is it ANY groundhog, there must be more than one at any given moment.. what if some of them see the shadow, and some of them don't? How long is this state sustained? I mean, how much time does the groundhog have for seeing or not seeing its shadow? A day? Hours? Minutes? Is it a specific time?
Who created this ability and why did they give it to groundhogs of all things? Who found out about it? Was it a Wizard of some kind?
From what I can see and tell, this whole 'groundhog's ability to see its shadow altering something as solid and fixed as seasons' makes NO sense and can't be real or true.
The planet's orbit , and therefore equinoxes etc might be fixed,
But the weather varies , some of the bits we have labelled spring , are warmer weather one year than another.
The groundhog knows this , and acts accordingly when he emerges to check.
I've gotta admit I like this movie but the holiday Groundhog Day has never been a favorite of mine. Personally I agree with Phil somewhat before he changed later in this movie that it is kind of dumb. And it's not like the weather ever actually changes because of what the Groundhog says anyway. At least with other fantasy like things in other holidays it's mainly kids that believe them but a grown up person shouldn't think a Groundhog can predict the weather.
shareGroundhog Day is just a math thing anyway.
“Six more weeks” (of winter) is 42 days. 42 days from February 2nd is just a few days from the first day of spring every year.
So the varmint either “predicts” that we have six more weeks of winter (which we do EVERY year) or that spring is “just around the corner” which is as nondescript as you can be in this.
Where I'm from in the US (Chicago area), winter is never over until the middle of march anyways, no matter what he does. So screw that stupid rat!
share