A famous American tradition to predict the weather according to groundhog Phil’s behavior on February 2 is know in Russia and some people even celebrate this unusual holiday. Anyway, predicting weather is a real challenge, especially these days when the winter is quite abnormal almost everywhere around the globe. For example here, in Novosibirsk, we had a temperature record for January (January 30, t +0.8C). What is the spring preparing?
As the tradition goes, if Phil comes out of his hole after a long winter sleep to look for his shadow and sees it on a sunny day, he regards it as an omen of six more weeks of bad weather and returns to his hole. If the day is cloudy and, hence, shadowless, he takes it as a sign of spring and stays above ground.
We don’t have such a notable meteorologist here, but the weather in Novosibirsk is warm and sunny. It looks like spring, but it’s too early for Siberia. Probably, winter won’t give up so easily.