Groundhog Day

Every year on February 2nd the very same thing happens in Pennsylvania: Bill Murray even made a movie about it ... yep you guessed right folks it’s Groundhog Day.

In the early morning hours on Tuesday, a crowd of hundreds gathered at Gobbler’s Knob – 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to await the annual weather forecast of the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.

Unfortunately, Phil had disappointing news for the crowd … he saw his own shadow at 7:30am, which means the locals will have to brave 6 more weeks of winter.

If the furry little weatherman had not seen his shadow it would have meant that spring would come early this year.

The famous day also heralded the launch of a new tradition in Alaska, thanks to the self declared ‘pit-bull with lipstick’, Sarah Palin.

Alaska enjoyed the first official Marmot Day in Alaska on Tuesday.  

Try to control your excitement.

Marmots won’t have the pressure of any weather forecasting duties, but there are hopes the state will create educational activities around the animal.

Now, I’m the first to admit that I know as much about ground hogs and marmots as I do about sport ... which is nothing.

However, what I have noticed it’s that these two animals are pretty much dead ringers for one another. 

I decided to do a bit of digging to find out if these furry little guys are related and I found out that a marmot is a chubby rodent in the squirrel family and that a ground hog is a type of marmot.

So, it turns out that Groundhog Day has always sort of been Marmot Day.