I’m sure it happens all the time, but there are days when I have to return to the previous day’s topic to add information or make corrections or just to add a bit more because I am, at heart, a very wordy person. Whatever the reason, after I posted about groundhog day yesterday, I found out that Punxsutawney Phil isn’t the only weather predicting animal. While I was making fun of the Pennsylvania tradition, I somehow had missed that we in Washington have our own weather predicting animal. Ours isn’t a mammal, however.

Here in Washington, Snohomish Slew, a prognosticating bullfrog, makes an annual weather forecast for the Pacific Northwest at an intersection in downtown Snohomish. There is much accompanying pomp and ceremony. Furthermore, just to get the jump on Punxsutawney Phil, our official ceremonies take place on the Saturday that falls before February 2. This ground frog day “prognosticator” Snohomish Slew predicted an early spring, although technically, there is very little difference between “soggy and wet” and “wet and soggy.” The frog’s prediction of an early spring matched the later prediction by the groundhog.

In fact, an early spring was the overwhelming prediction from the other animal forecasters. Alabama’s Opossum Sand Mountain Sam also predicted an early spring, along with Bee Cave Bob the armadillo from Texas. The only animal forecaster I have found so far that disagreed with the majority is Scrambles the Duck. According to the Connecticut General Assembly, Scrambles is “The Most Accurate Weather-Predicting Duck In The Northern Hemisphere and Possibly The World.” There is a problem, however, with that bold claim. According to comparison of predictions and analysis of NOAA weather statistics conducted by BBC, Scrambles the duck has gotten the forecast wrong every year for the past five years. It doesn’t surprise me that the Connecticut duck has been less than accurate. The ducks around here don’t seem to be any good at prediction, though they do report on current conditions. When the wind is blowing and the waves are high on the bay, the ducks retreat inland to rivers and ponds around here. They aren’t much for sitting in the rough water. For predictions, however, the ducks don’t have much to offer.

According to the BBC article with the comparisons between predictions and actual weather statistics, the Snohomish bullfrog doesn’t have a very good record, either. The frog was accurate only 20% of the time, which is half of Punxsutawney Phill’s 40% accuracy record. It turns out that if you want accuracy in animal weather predictions, heading south will help. Bee Cave Bob, the Texas armadillo and Sand Mountain Sam, the Alabama opossum, were both 100% accurate over the past five years. This might be good news for Punxsutawney Phil and Snohomish Slew because this year they agreed with Bee Cave Bob and Sand Mountain Sam, which should, in theory, improve their statistics. That is, of course, unless it degrades the statistics of the armadillo and the opossum.

I noticed a Facebook post yesterday about the South Dakota Bison. The animal did see its shadow according to the article. However, it was the interpretation of the meaning of that fact that caught my eye. According to the post, when a South Dakota Buffalo (or Bison if you have to be technically correct) sees its shadow, it doesn’t mean anything. It will likely be warm in February, snow in May, hail in December, and the wind will blow in every month that has a vowel in its name. That seems to be pretty consistent with our experience of living in South Dakota for 25 years.

The official slogan on the license plates in South Dakota is “Great Faces, Great Places.” I always wondered if they adapted that slogan from the book by Victoria Brooks, “Famous Faces, Famous Places, Famous Food.” However, South Dakota had the slogan before the book was published, so perhaps the borrowing went the other direction. When we lived in South Dakota, I suggested that they consider changing the slogan on the license plate, however. I thought “All Four Seasons Every Day” would have been a good one.

So other than the South Dakota Buffalo, I’m not sure which animal would be best to consult for weather predictions. We don’t have any armadillos around here to my knowledge and it is possible that I’ve never seen a live opossum in Washington, though I’ve seen a few that fell victim to cars on area roads. They don’t seem to be the ones that are good at predicting weather.

Yesterday, when our grandson was visiting, he was most interested in the neighbor’s cat. The cat doesn’t seem to be interested in predicting the weather. Its passion seems to center on bird watching. It does, however, have an obvious dislike of snow. Our grandson also temporarily was entertained by a couple of seagulls that landed on the neighbors’ roofs. Once again, I’m not sure you’d get an accurate forecast from a gull. Whenever we see a group of them, they seem to be arguing and squabbling over anything and everything. A single gull will be quiet. A bunch of them are noisy.

It has been pointed out to me that there are differences between the various gulls that we see around here. Some of them are strictly local birds, who hang out around the edge of Birch Bay and don’t fly too far inland and don’t fly out over the open ocean farther out. Others, however, travel around a lot more. I haven’t developed the ability to discern which are which. In fact, I don’t think I can identify individual birds. It doesn’t seem like the gull raiding our neighbor’s garbage can is the same one week after week. There are at least a dozen of them that fight over what they have found in the garbage.

According to one bird identification website there are at least twenty-eight seagull species in North America. I have no idea which one of those species identifies our local gulls.

I guess I’ll just say that although we don’t know who ordered them, we seem to have a dozen bay gulls in our neighborhood, which makes this journal entry a pretty long set up for a pretty simple pun.