by Laurel | February 2nd, 2012
Groundhog Day
02 February 1916
Holyoke has lost all faith in the ground hog as a weather prophet since the experience of the past week or so and any ground hog or hog of any other species, who on the appointed day rises up on their hind legs and state that the back bone of the winter is broken will hereafter be treated with contumely and disdain. The Holyoke thermometers dropped to 13 degrees below zero or lower during the past week which is a record for the winter and is about as low as the mercury usually gets in this section. It is true that unofficial thermometers have chills now and then and register Arctic weather but the staid and conservative thermometer at the Holyoke weather station is not influenced by those spasms.
The past week the official thermometer itself registered about as much cold as any of its less steady brothers in the city. There was enough cold weather to put a crimp in a number of the local coal bins and the outlook for the coming season is not wholly pleasing, it being freely stated that coal will be up another notch for the coming season, it costing more and more each year for the citizen to keep himself warm. The time has not yet arrived when the houses can be heated as cheaply by electricity as by the use of coal but the gap between the costs of the two is growing less each year.
From The Springfield Republican.
