Six weeks after Groundhog Day it’s still winter

OK, here’s the deal. What we need is another groundhog. Because we’ve had enough of that sanctimonious little rascal who predicted six more weeks of winter and now sits upon his hill or in his hole or wherever he goes after he does his yearly duty and is gloating.

So here we are in sunny North Carolina, with the blades on mowers and trimmers and yes, even golf clubs, polished to a springtime shine and ready for business. All those resorts are ready for our vacationers from up North to come on down and get themselves a dose of 70-degree days. So they come here and then brag to their neighbors and send along Facebook photos of themselves in shorts with captions like: “Enjoying the balmy breezes here in Carolina. Feeling like a little Ben & Jerry’s right now...”

Only ... we hereabouts have gotten a nice blast of cold stuff and some places in our state got snow ... snow in March. Not unheard of, but as rare, one might say, as an NCAA basketball tournament without any shades of Durham or Chapel Hill blue in it.

We don’t like this, and we promise our visitors that they’ll get to don the shorts and bring out the phone cameras soon enough. It’s warming up by the weekend. And in the meantime, not to make threats or anything ... but if we were a certain groundhog, we might sleep with one eye open, if you know what we mean.

This story was originally published March 15, 2017 at 8:02 PM with the headline "Six weeks after Groundhog Day it’s still winter."