Good morning.
It’s a forecast of light snow in the morning, leading to a mostly cloudy day with a high of fourteen.
On this day in 1887, the first ‘official’ Groundhog Day:
…Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
Groundhogs, also called woodchucks and whose scientific name is Marmota monax, typically weigh 12 to 15 pounds and live six to eight years. They eat vegetables and fruits, whistle when they’re frightened or looking for a mate and can climb trees and swim. They go into hibernation in the late fall; during this time, their body temperatures drop significantly, their heartbeats slow from 80 to five beats per minute and they can lose 30 percent of their body fat. In February, male groundhogs emerge from their burrows to look for a mate (not to predict the weather) before going underground again. They come out of hibernation for good in March.
In 1887, a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club declared that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog
In 1905 on this day, a sports advancement for Wisconsin:
1905 – Professional Baseball Arrives in Wisconsin
On this date the Wisconsin State League was formed, bringing professional baseball to five Wisconsin cities. The six-team league began play the following summer with franchises in Beloit, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Wausau, and Freeport, Illinois. The league lasted through 1914, although its named was changed to Wisconsin-Illinois in 1908.
From Google-a-Day, a geography question: “The cities of Amsterdam, including Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht make up what area that is home to more than 40% of the population of The Netherlands?”