{"id":263984,"date":"2010-02-02T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.usa.gov\/roller\/govgab\/entry\/groundhog_day"},"modified":"2010-02-01T18:03:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T23:03:44","slug":"groundhog-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/263984","title":{"rendered":"Groundhog Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"0\" border=\"0\" align=\"left\" vspace=\"0\" alt=\"groundhog peeking out of it's hole\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.usa.gov\/roller\/govgab\/resource\/images\/groundhog.JPG\" \/>Today is Groundhog Day and like the thousands of people gathered at Gobbler\u2019s Knob in<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Punxsutawney,_Pennsylvania\" title=\"Punxsutawney Pennsylvania\"> Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania<\/a>, I\u2019m eager to hear if Phil sees his shadow.<\/p>\n<p>According to legend, if <a href=\"http:\/\/www.groundhog.org\/\" title=\"Punxsutawney Phil\">Punxsutawney Phil<\/a> sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he doesn\u2019t see his shadow, there will be an early spring. I know it\u2019s just a legend, but like winning the lottery, I dream that he\u2019ll emerge from his burrow, not see his shadow and spring weather will be just around the corner.<\/p>\n<p>Groundhog Day has its origins in an ancient celebration of a point mid-way between the <a href=\"http:\/\/answers.usa.gov\/cgi-bin\/gsa_ict.cfg\/php\/enduser\/std_adp.php?p_faqid=7114\" title=\"Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox\">Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox<\/a>. These days it\u2019s still fun to observe tradition, but I prefer to turn to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weather.gov\" title=\"National Weather Service\">National Weather Service<\/a> for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weather.gov\" title=\"weather forecasts\">weather forecasts<\/a>. I\u2019m a native Pennsylvanian, so I\u2019ll always have a soft spot for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.groundhog.org\/\" title=\"Phil the cuddly groundhog\">Phil the cuddly groundhog<\/a>. But when it comes to weather forecasts, I look to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weather.gov\" title=\"scientists with the climatic data\">scientists with the climatic data<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is Groundhog Day and like the thousands of people gathered at Gobbler\u2019s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, I\u2019m eager to hear if Phil sees his shadow. According to legend, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he doesn\u2019t see his shadow, there will be an early [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4153,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}