Exclusive: Happy Groundhog Day 2026
And also: Happy Groundhog Day. Also also: Happy Groundhog Day.
Happy Groundhog Day, everyone! You all know the drill by now: A groundhog — not to be confused with a hedgehog, warthog, Werehog or Roadhog — steps out of its groundhog house, communes with a human in a silly hat, and acts as vessel for the Fates by conveying how long winter will last. It’s silly. It’s traditional. It takes place somewhere called “Gobbler’s Knob,” which I’m not sure I can legally write in any other context. Bravo to everyone, it’s not that serious, let’s move on.
Except I got this push notification yesterday and I can’t stop thinking about it:
“Rigged.” Rigged. This isn’t Tammany Hall. This isn’t even a student council election. It’s not that serious. To be fair, I read the article and it doesn’t actually purport to be serious — it’s a cute little piece on weather patterns in the Allegheny Valley. So I guess credit where it’s due, the clickbait worked on me.
(Side note: Imagine if it was that serious. Imagine if there were betting markets where you could wager on the outcome of something so trivial, so inane, so — what’s that? There are? And one of them saw nearly $30k wagered on the outcome? Cool. Society is healthy and great.)
But the main thing that caught my eye was a link in the original article to a NOAA piece on the accuracy of weather-predicting groundhogs, a sentence I never thought I’d write. The thing that really delights me is how far down the list Punxsutawney Phil is. Of the creatures they measured, PP is tied for 17th out of 19, with a paltry 35% accuracy rate. The only worse creature is Mojave Max, a Nevada-based tortoise who only gets it right a quarter of the time. Which: Duh, tortoises are notoriously bad at seeing their shadows, we all know that.
But even that buries the lede, because the main thing that actually caught my eye was the rest of the list:
Immediately ahead of Phil are three taxidermied groundhogs. Our boy is so bad at his job that three of his deceased peers are regularly more accurate. This would be like if the Philadelphia Flyers replaced all their goalies with a taxidermied Bernie Parent (R.I.P.) and Parent outperformed them simply by staying in the crease. I believe they briefly considered this idea last November.
What a fun little Internet groundhog hole to go down. Happy Groundhog Day, friends!
