Last weekend was Groundhog Day in North America. We emailed a holiday greeting to many of our friends and colleagues. Did we miss you? If so, please let us know.

Groundhog Day is a North American holiday where the time until spring is determined by whether or not a specific groundhog sees his shadow.

Like horror hosts and chocolate bars, if you grew up with a local groundhog, you probably assumed that everyone had the same one. But Wikipedia (link above) dashes that illusion by listing a number of region-specific forecasting rodents:

Punxsutawney Phil of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania
Wiarton Willie of Wiarton, Ontario
Staten Island Chuck of New York City, New York
General Beauregard Lee, PhD of Atlanta, Georgia
Malverne Mel and Malverne Melissa of Malverne, New York
Brandon Bob of Brandon, Manitoba
Balzac Billy of Balzac, Alberta
Shubenacadie Sam of Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia
Gary the Groundhog of Kleinburg, Ontario
Spanish Joe of Spanish, Ontario
Sir Walter Wally of Raleigh, North Carolina
Pardon Me Pete of Tampa, Florida
Jimmy the Groundhog of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Octoraro Orphie of Quarryville, Pennsylvania
Buckeye Chuck of Marion, Ohio
Dunkirk Dave of Dunkirk, New York
French Creek Freddie of Upshur County,West Virginia
Holtsville Hal of Long Island, New York

(previously)

Hydrants, Holland, MI

In communities where they get deep snow, fire hydrants are tagged with these red alerting devices so that snowplows don’t hit ’em and fire trucks can find ’em.

Snowstick, Holland, MI

These sticks are used to delineate paved areas (plowable) from non-paved (non-plowable).

Interesting examples of follow-on design, where there’s a deficiency in the original design, or at least a failure to accomodate local conditions.

This story lists a few groundhogs-of-note that I was not previously acquainted with…Shubenacadie Sam, Wiarton Willie (him I knew about), and Balzac Billy. Other pages mention Brandon Bob, and Staten Island Chuck and Gary the Groundhog. The man with two watches never knows what time it is?

Seriously it’s turning into one of those painted-cow-things that every city has to do now. Yuck.