They aggressively maintain a feeding territory around their burrows and rarely have any contact with each other. According to an article in, “Most of the year, male and female groundhogs are solitary and antagonistic against each other. They are trying to ‘collect data” to determine if there is another groundhog in the area to mate with when March rolls around. Groundhogs emerge in February to analyze the mating landscape. GROUNDHOG DATA COLLECTION AND ADVERTISING However, they are adorable!īy the way, why do groundhogs pop up in the middle of their hibernation to take a peak outside? In a way, it’s all about research and advertising.
Groundhogs are not good predictors of future weather. Considering the silly notion that the groundhog’s seeing his shadow can somehow predict future weather, 40% accuracy is not too shabby in my opinion. In the article, “How accurate is Punxsutawney Phil?”, posted by EarthSky in Human World, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, from 2008 to 2018, our groundhog friend has only been accurate 40% of the time. How accurate are weather predictions made by folks who try to base future weather patterns on whether this little critter sees his shadow? I know it’s just for fun. Somehow, I feel like six more weeks of winter is a given. Therefore, we have six more weeks of winter weather, by some predictions.
On Tuesday of this week, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.
