MY FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR!

Let me start by saying WAY TO GO STEELERS! Ok, got that out of my system. I don't watch football all year, but follow the stats and the Steelers have ALWAYS, since Jr High, been my team.

Ok, now on to important stuff.

As a person that HATES winter and the cold weather, I look forward each year to this day. I have even been known to say that it is my favorite holiday. I have also been known to walk around a little depressed if the ground hog see's his shadow and decides to run back into his little hole and hide for 6 more weeks.

This year more then most I am VERY much looking forward to Spring. It has been cold, VERY cold here this winter. I am getting claustrophobic with the amount of layers I have had to wear daily just to keep warm.

Right now as I type this at 7:15 am, I am also watching the live feed on the computer, as Punxsutawney Phil - Pennsylvania's FAMOUS groundhog, getting ready to give us the news
AND .................................... He says ........................... 6 MORE WEEKS OF WINTER!

YUCK, YUCK, DOUBLE YUCK! Well at least winter is OFFICIALY half over today.

~Just Me

By WeatherBug Meteorologists

Monday February 2 is Groundhog Day. Fabled lore says that if the groundhog sees his shadow on that day there will be six more weeks of winter.

It's hard to imagine in this day in age how people could give credit to a groundhog for forecasting the remainder of the winter. It is much easier to imagine if you put yourself back into the 18th and 19th centuries when people were mystified by how the weather worked.

Weather played a huge role in the day-to-day lives of early Americans. Farmers and businessmen alike relied heavily on the weather in nearly every aspect of their day.

Many people searched for signs and signals in nature to help them determine the weather in the coming days, weeks and months. This "weather lore" has often been proven as accurate through science but equally as much it has been disproved.

German settlers in Pennsylvania traditionalized Groundhog Day in the United States. These settlers brought a tradition stemming from Candlemas Day, where Europeans predicted if the sun shone on that day there would be a "second winter."

German settlers found a profusion of groundhogs in the state. They determined that the groundhog, resembling the European hedgehog, was a very intelligent animal. They therefore decided that if the sun did appear on February 2nd, such a wise animal as the groundhog would see its shadow and hurry back into its underground home for another six weeks of winter.

Groundhog Day has links to many poems and beliefs about the coming season but it is based on no scientific fact. In the past 50 years or so, Groundhog Day has slowly become more of a fun celebration to break up the long winter than a forecast of things to come.