What I've Learned

In Alaska, February 2 is known as Marmot Day, because the state has few, if any, groundhogs.

Marmots and groundhogs belong to the Squirrel family (Sciuridae). They are also both part of the genus, Marmota, which has 14 species spread across the world, including the groundhog, woodchuck or whistlepig found in the lower 48 States and the Alaska marmot, found, well, in Alaska.

So substituting a marmot for a groundhog for Groundhog Day is not much of a stretch.

On Groundhog Day, if a groundhog leaves its underground burrow and emerges to a cloudy day, winter is said to be almost over. If, however, it emerges into sunlight and sees its own shadow, there will be, tradition says, six more weeks of winter.

I don't have data on the weather accuracy of Alaskan marmots, but groundhogs don't do so well. Groundhog Day believers claim an accuracy rate of 75 to 90 percent. A Canadian study, however, puts the success rate at 37 percent. In the U.S., the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina is a bit more generous, putting the overall prediction accuracy at around 39 percent.

It's more fun to speculate about the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day, then about the annual event itself.

In the movie, Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, keeps living the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again. Even if he steps in front of a bus or jumps off a tall building, the next morning he wakes up, and it is, once again, the morning of Groundhog Day with the same people and events ahead of him. No one other than Connors is aware of the repetitions.

How long is Connors stuck in the time loop before it is finally broken? The film's director, Harold Ramis, once said that it must have been around ten years, but he later amended that by saying ten years was far too short.

A film critic, Simon J. Gallagher, has made perhaps the most detailed study of the loop. According to him, the movie, itself, shows 38 separate repetitions of the day.

Gallagher then uses comments Connors makes as indicators for other days the audience doesn't see. This includes such things as the ways he mentioned that he tried to commit suicide, seven; his description of how long it takes to learn to accurately throw playing cards into a hat, “Six months. Four to five hours a day, and you’d be an expert;” and having seen a particular movie 100 times.

Gallagher adds estimates of how long it would take to develop certain skills Connors acquires, such as becoming fluent in French as an adult learner (12 years), and so on.

The final number Gallagher comes up with for the time loop is 33 years and 358 days.

When he published his estimate – and how he came up with it – on the Internet, the article received more than 200 comments, many offering alternate estimates.

You can easily find the article by searching for Groundhog Day and Gallagher. It – and many of the comments – are almost as entertaining as the movie.

If you have never seen Groundhog Day, you've missed something wonderful. Don't wait 33 years, 358 days to see it. Do it now. Then read Gallagher's article.