With all the TV lights hanging around, you’d think Punxsutawney Phil would see his shadow every year, but as CNN is reporting, the furry little critter didn’t this morning and now we’re in for an early spring.
At least the part of the country that has a real winter, and, no, one day of snow doesn’t count.
One rite of spring that will be arriving early, for most of the rest of the country, is Daylight Saving Time, which begins on the second Sunday in March this year, thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. (Arizona’s still not going along for the ride.) We’ll apparently be dragging Canada along with us, so as not to confuse business people and tourists along that border. No word about Mexico.
Meanwhile, enjoy the “early” spring-like weather being forecast for this weekend in Southern Arizona.
This article appears in Feb 1-7, 2007.
I’ve always been curious about whether the fact that the groundhog fails to see its shadow in the one location that the media arbitrarily focuses on is supposed to forecast a short winter everywhere else on the fucking planet. We’ve been having a pretty solid winter around Tucson this year — quite cold, relatively wet, a fair amount of snow in the mountains — and, sure enough, a groundhog would have indeed seen its shadow here this morning.
According to Wikipedia (caveat lector), “(I)f Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, the United States will have six more weeks of winter.”