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As you may or not be aware, and I know I wasn’t until I saw posts about it on a few news sites this morning, yesterday was Groundhog Day. Yes, the festivities around which the 1993 Bill Murray film of the same name are based is an actual annual occurrence. Of course it has grown somewhat in prominence since the release of the film, but once a year people from all over flock to the town of Punxsutawney Pennsylvania to see, to give him his full name, “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinary” predict when Winter will end.

The Groundhog Day tradition was taken over to America by German settlers, and there are similar beliefs held by most European countries, the equivalent is found, for example, in an old English saying:

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

Unfortunately I didn’t pay an awful lot of attention to what the weather was like, and if there was any sunshine or shadows about yesterday, so I’m predicting that I would not have seen a shadow and we can expect Winter to be at an end very soon here at Gadgets Towers. Of course this may just be wishful thinking, and who knows how accurate this old saying is anyway? Whatever happens here, Phil certainly saw a shadow yesterday, as you can see in the video below, which means six more weeks of winter for the poor people of Punxsutawney!