Nova Scotia’s celebrity groundhog sees her shadow, predicts winter will drag on

SHUBENACADIE, NS — Shubenacadie Sam, Nova Scotia’s most famous marmot, appeared to catch her shadow this morning as she emerged from a snow-covered enclosure at a wildlife park north of Halifax.

According to folklore, when a marmot sees its shadow on Groundhog Day, winter drags on. However, if they don’t spot their shadow, spring-like weather will soon set in.

Just after 8 a.m. local time, the door to Sam’s tiny barn opened and she slowly backed out into the cold, then hurried across the snow to a fence.

The annual tradition at Shubenacadie Wildlife Park, which streams live on Facebook, has been closed to visitors for the past two years due to COVID-19 gathering restrictions – and the in-person celebrations were canceled in 2020 because of a storm.

But a small crowd, including a crowd of children, braved the -20C weather this morning.

As expected, Sam was the first marmot in North America to make a prediction – thanks to the Atlantic time zone.

Wiarton, Ontario should also be home to the community’s famous groundhog, Wiarton Willie, making an appearance today.

Groundhog Day lovers will remember that on February 2nd, 2021, Willie was nowhere to be seen. The city later admitted that the white-coated albino rodent had died.

Willie’s handlers on the South Bruce Peninsula brought in an understudy last year, but this animal was the usual brown color – a break with a decades-old tradition.

City spokeswoman Danielle Edwards says the latest replacement — another white groundhog — was recruited from Cleveland, Ohio, last summer.

Folklorists say the Groundhog Day ritual may have something to do with landing on February 2, halfway between the winter solstice and vernal equinox, but no one knows for sure. In medieval Europe, farmers believed that when hedgehogs came out of their burrows to catch insects, it was a sure sign of early spring.

However, when Europeans settled in eastern North America, the hedgehog was replaced by the groundhog.

In a playful, peer-reviewed study published by the American Meteorological Society, researchers at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, concluded that groundhogs are “beyond a doubt” no better at predicting the arrival of spring to predict than toss a coin.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on February 2, 2023.

The Canadian Press