When will winter end? Groundhogs make spring predictions in Canada  | 24CA News

Famed and furry forecasters of spring are set to make their predictions Thursday morning.

It’s Groundhog Day, and as folklore goes, a groundhog will emerge from its burrow and if it doesn’t see its shadow, then spring is simply across the nook, whereas if it does and retreats, then we will count on six extra weeks of winter.

Celebrity groundhog Shubenacadie Sam kicked off Canada’s first prediction shortly after dawn over Nova Scotia, adopted later by Ontario’s Wiarton Willie.

Shubenacadie Sam, Nova Scotia’s most well-known groundhog, apparently noticed her shadow this morning as she emerged from a snow-covered enclosure at a wildlife park north of Halifax.

Just after 8 a.m. native time, the door to Sam’s pint-sized barn was opened, and she or he slowly backed out into the chilly.

The annual custom on the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park, broadcast dwell on Facebook, has been closed to guests for the previous two years due to COVID-19 gathering restrictions _ and the in-person festivities have been cancelled in 2020 due to a storm.

But a small crowd, together with a gaggle of kids, braved the -14 C climate this morning.

As anticipated, Sam was the primary groundhog in North America to make a prediction – due to the Atlantic time zone.

In Wiarton, Ont., the neighborhood’s movie star groundhog, Wiarton Willie, was additionally anticipated to make an look Thursday.

0:45Groundhog Day 2022: Shubenacadie Sam sees her shadow for six extra weeks of winter

Willie’s hosts in South Bruce Peninsula say the groundhog is as soon as once more white-furred as per native legend, after city spokeswoman Danielle Edwards says it introduced in an “understudy” with a extra conventional brown hue final yr whereas it looked for a substitute.

Willie was nowhere to be seen on the momentous day in 2021 and the city solely later acknowledged the furry forecaster had died, launching a search that ended this previous summer time when city says it was in a position to get a white-haired groundhog from Cleveland, Ohio.

In a playful and peer-reviewed examine revealed by the American Meteorological Society, researchers out of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., say groundhogs are “beyond a shadow of a doubt” no higher than probability at prognosticating the arrival of spring.

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