Starship Asterisk*

TNT wrote:Forecasts predict record highs with temperatures in the middle sixties.

Ann wrote:Global warming could be what's going on.

You said it, Ann!

Also a 22 degree halo outside.

BMAONE23 wrote:Talk about cold...BRRRRRR...I heard a report that it got to -80F in Jim River Alaska perhaps even colder but the battery in the temp sensor froze and quit working

Beyond wrote:It seems like Alaska has stolen all our really cold air this year. But i'm not going to report them..... as long as they don't give it back

owlice wrote:
It's gorgeous here! 65F, blue blue blue sky, light winds. The half-moon is overhead, little sparrows sit on bushes and fences so close to the sidewalk one could scoop them up with one hand as one walks along, and it's lovely to feel the warmth of the sun on this last day of January. Tomorrow: more of the same.

• "Do you know why a tiger has stripes?"

• "Because he is a tiger."

http://www.stormfax.com/ghogday.htm wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[c]With PA Governor Tom Corbett attending the ceremony
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow at 7:24 AM.[/c][/color]

<<When German settlers arrived in the 1700s, they brought a tradition known as Candlemas Day, which has an early origin in the pagan celebration of Imbolc. It came at the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Superstition held that if the weather was fair, the second half of Winter would be stormy and cold. For the early Christians in Europe, it was the custom on Candlemas Day for clergy to bless candles and distribute them to the people in the dark of Winter. A lighted candle was placed in each window of the home. The day's weather continued to be important. If the sun came out February 2, halfway between Winter and Spring, it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.

The earliest American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College:

February 4, 1841 - from Morgantown, Berks County (Pennsylvania) storekeeper James Morris' diary..."Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate."

[b][color=#0000FF]Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary's seasonal forecasting accuracy is somewhat low. His Winter prognostications [100 shadows vs. 16 no shadows] have been correct only 39% of the time.[/color][/b]

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According to the old English saying:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

From Scotland:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.

From Germany:

For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day,
So far will the snow swirl until May.
For as the snow blows on Candlemas Day,
So far will the sun shine before May.

And from America:

If the sun shines on Groundhog Day;
Half the fuel and half the hay.

If the sun made an appearance on Candlemas Day, an animal would cast a shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of Winter. Germans watched a badger for the shadow. In Pennsylvania, the groundhog, upon waking from mid-Winter hibernation, was selected as the replacement.

Pennsylvania's official celebration of Groundhog Day began on February 2nd, 1886 with a proclamation in The Punxsutawney Spirit by the newspaper's editor, Clymer Freas: "Today is groundhog day and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen its shadow." The groundhog was given the name "Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary'' and his hometown thus called the "Weather Capital of the World.'' His debut performance: no shadow - early Spring. The legendary first trip to Gobbler's Knob was made the following year.

The name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location "ponksad-uteney" which means "the town of the sandflies." The name woodchuck comes from the Indian legend of "Wojak, the groundhog" considered by them to be their ancestral grandfather. In 1723, the Delaware Indians settled Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania as a campsite halfway between the Allegheny and the Susquehanna Rivers. The town is 90 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, at the intersection of Route 36 and Route 119. The Delawares considered groundhogs honorable ancestors. According to the original creation beliefs of the Delaware Indians, their forebears began life as animals in "Mother Earth" and emerged centuries later to hunt and live as men.

Groundhogs in the wild eat succulent green plants, such as dandelion, clover, and grasses. According to handlers John Griffiths and Ben Hughes, Phil weighs 15 pounds and thrives on dog food and ice cream in his climate-controlled home at the Punxsutawney Library. Up on Gobbler's Knob, Phil is placed in a heated burrow underneath a simulated tree stump on stage before being pulled out at 7:25 a.m. to make his prediction.

Since the 1993 release of the film Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray as a TV weatherman and Andie MacDowell as his puzzled producer, attendance at the real event has expanded. In 1997, there were 35,000 visitors in Punxsutawney, five times the Jefferson County town's 6,700 population. The Groundhog Day festivities on February 2, 1992 were joined by Bill Murray studying for his role in the movie. Then, Columbia Pictures set out to recreate the Punxsutawney Groundhog Day down to the smallest detail. There were, however, many changes made.

Columbia Pictures decided to film the movie in a location more accessible to a major metropolitan center. The highways in and around Punxsutawney were few, so Woodstock, Illinois was chosen as the site. Unfortunately, Woodstock's landscape doesn't have Pennsylvania's scenic rolling hills. Nevertheless, adjustments were made for the production. The actual Gobbler's Knob is a wooded hill with a beautiful view; the Gobbler's Knob in the movie is moved to the town square. The Punxsutawney Gobbler's Knob was recreated to scale in Woodstock's town square based on detailed notes and videos the crew made on it's visit to Punxsutawney. The movie's script was changed to include the elaborate ceremony of the Inner Circle on Groundhog Day. The original groundhog cast for the movie was considered to be too small. Some of the store names in Punxsutawney were used in the movie, such as The Smart Shop and Stewart's Drug Store. Punxsutawney's police cars were also recreated for the movie. The groundhog-head trash cans and Groundhog Festival flags that line the streets of Punxsutawney were displayed. Folks traveling to Punxsutawney to see the "Punxsutawney" they saw in the movie wonder why it looks "so different, yet seems so similar.">>

If the sun came out February 2, halfway between Winter and Spring, it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.

Ann wrote:

If the sun came out February 2, halfway between Winter and Spring, it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.

Yesterday was sunny and very cold, and today will be colder. So we may not get spring until mid-March... well, it wouldn't surprise me.

February.

Ann

orin stepanek wrote:I hear the ground hog thingy is only about 33% right! :mrgreen:

orin stepanek wrote:
Actually; it's about 8 weeks 'til March 20! I hear the ground hog thingy is only about 33% right!

Chris Peterson wrote:

orin stepanek wrote:
I hear the ground hog thingy is only about 33% right!

I'm thinking it's probably more like 50%. If it were 33%, all you'd need to do is rephrase the rule, and it would suddenly be 66% right. Anything other than 50% implies a statistical validity to the idea that the weather on one day is predictive of when winter will end (whatever that means!), which seems very unlikely.

neufer wrote:The opposite of an early Spring is a late or normal Spring.
Hence, they are not equally likely outcomes (even in Global Warming times).

Punxsutawney Phil has been correct 39% of the time.

bystander wrote:

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Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:
The opposite of an early Spring is a late or normal Spring.
Hence, they are not equally likely outcomes (even in Global Warming times).

Punxsutawney Phil has been correct 39% of the time.

It's still a binary question, which means it can be rephrased so that he is incorrect 39% of the time.

orin wrote:Then everything is opposite

orin stepanek wrote:
Actually 6 more weeks of Winter would seem to be an early Spring!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/03/weather-europe-idUSL5E8D34R220120203 wrote:

Anti-cyclonic air flow around a warm high over Svalbad
is driving Siberian cold air down over Eastern Europe.

Romania rescues children as Europe's freeze deepens
Villagers scramble for fuel in Europe's big chill
By Ioana Patran

* Bus trapped by avalanche in Bosnia
* Skaters cross fingers in The Netherlands
* Snow closes Rome's Colosseum
* Cold claims first life in Albania, France (Adds Algerian snow)

BUCHAREST, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Nine Romanian children were taken into care after a baby died in an unheated house, joining at least 189 others killed by a Siberian front which strengthened its hold over Eastern Europe on Friday and spread further west. Temperatures plummeted to minus 37 Celsius (minus 35 Fahrenheit) in northern Slovakia and rescue workers dug through snow on mountain roads to rescue stranded bus passengers in the Balkans. In Romania, 80 percent of the Danube river was frozen over stopping ships sailing to the Black Sea, but the biggest concern was for children in the European Union's second poorest country. The cold snap has so far killed 24 people in Romania and 11 in neighbouring Bulgaria.

The European Union said the supply of Russian gas fell further to some Eastern European states as well as Italy, Greece and Austria, but said it was not yet facing an emergency. All EU states have obtained extra gas from other sources. In Ukraine 101 people have now died - a further 38 in the past 24 hours - and supermarkets are short of food as trucks struggle to make deliveries. Eight more have died in Poland since Thursday.

The Serbian government has so far declared a state of emergency in 19 municipalities in the south and east, where six people have died from cold. Six other people died in Bosnia from the cold, including four who died on the streets of the capital Sarajevo. In the southern region of Svrljig, firefighters worked for hours to evacuate passengers from a bus stranded on a mountain road, while a second bus was trapped by an avalanche in the eastern Bosnian village of Krupac. No casualties were reported.

A funeral procession near the border with Macedonia was stuck for four hours and had to transfer the coffin to a 4x4 jeep. In the northern town of Ecka, workers in a local fishery had to use pneumatic drills to break ice and get to the fish. "I have not seen anything like this for more than two decades," said fisherman Nikola Kircic.

Local hunters were using tractors to take food to animals in the mountains of southwestern Satornja. "Roe deer and other small game are on the verge of starvation as the grass is under heavy snow," said local hunter Momir Nikolic.

German weather service DWD said it expected extreme cold to continue in central and eastern Europe for the next four days, but that temperatures would rise back above freezing point in most parts of France and Britain.

As the Siberian front moved west, Dutch ice breakers cleared access to Rotterdam, Europe's biggest port. But organisers of the Elfstedentocht - a 200km (125 mile) speed skating race across the country's waterways - were praying for thicker ice in the hope they could stage the competition for the first time since 1997. Dozens of over-enthusiastic skaters fell through the ice as they tested conditions. Other sporting fixtures across the continent have been cancelled.

Croatia's Adriatic coast and many of its islands were blanketed in snow - rare so far south - covering palm trees in the port of Split and bringing some residents out on skis. The island of Solta, just off Split, saw 30 cm (12 inches) of snow.

Snow fell on the northern tip of Africa, dusting palm trees in the Algerian capital. Locals said it was the first time they remembered snow falling in Algiers in eight years. Temperatures fell to about minus 1 degree Celsius (30 degrees Fahrenheit), unusually low for the port city on the Mediterranean Sea.

In Italy, the heaviest snowfall in the capital Rome since the 1980s closed tourists attractions including the Colosseum and the Forum.

An 82-year-old man became the first casualty in France after dying of hypothermia on Friday. The man had left his house in eastern France with just his pyjamas to protect him from minus 14C (minus 7F) temperatures. Lorry traffic across the south of the country was suspended.

In the Baltic states, no strangers to cold weather, parts of eastern Latvia and Lithuania saw record lows of minus 30C (minus 22F), and lender Swedbank warned some cash machines would break down.

The Czech Republic's capital Prague shut a major section of the city's ring road after a burst pipe sprayed water across the highway, creating a 400-metre-long sheet of ice. An emergency services spokesman there said one man had apparently used the cold to commit suicide. "He drank a bottle of alcohol, took his clothes off and sat in a park."

Chris Peterson wrote:

bystander wrote:

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I'm pretty sure "Sees shadow of a spatula" means this is a southern groundhog, and the interpretation is "about to go on the grill with assorted roadkill".

orin stepanek wrote:'Bout 7 inches of white stuff dumped on us last night! It's supposed to bring at least 5 more inches, so I guess I better put my coat on and go clear the snow from the walks! :evil: