This Saturday is Candlemas Day. According to the saying: If Candlemas be fair and bright, Winter will have another flight; If Candlemas brings cloud and rain, Winter is gone and won’t come again. The implication is that if the 2nd February, that's the spooky 02.02.02 this year, is a fine day then winter will return. But if it is a wet day, then winter will be at an end. To wave goodbye to winter at the beginning of February seems foolhardy to say the least, and there is no evidence to back it up. Interestingly, the Americans have a similar piece of weather lore on the same day, tied up with Groundhog Day. This is familiar to many of us from the 1993 movie of the same name, starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowell. Tradition has it that the early German settlers in Pennsylvania thought the groundhog to be a particularly sensitive and intelligent creature.
They decided that if the sun shone on Candlemas Day then a wise animal such as the groundhog would see its own shadow and hurry back to its burrow for another six weeks of winter. The event has taken place in the quaintly named Gobbler’s Knob, Punxsutawney for over a century. Since the film, in which Bill Murray played a weatherman doomed to relive Groundhog Day over and over, interest in the event has exploded.
Crowds now exceed 30,000 and the groundhog itself, Punxsutawney Phil, has even appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. As the big day approaches then you can keep up with the latest developments on the Groundhog website. You can be amongst the first to find out about Pete’s prognostications! | 
