What you're hearing is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Groundhog Day.

He's at the Staten Island Zoo picking up a groundhog and then right here dropping it.

This is ultimately pretty horrible.

Everybody thought it was funny at the time.

Turns out the groundhog did not survive this incident.

Surely there are better ways to predict how bad the weather is going to be that doesn't involve hurting animals.

Yeah, if you don't want to use, you know, the science of meteorology, you want something folksy, but you still want to know how bad it's going to be.

On the line with us now is Peter Geiger from the Farmer's Almanac.

So, Peter, are there other ways we can forecast the weather

without hurting animals?

Oh, absolutely.

I think the most popular one is the woolly bear caterpillar. If there's a narrow orange band in the middle of

the willy bear caterpillar warns of heavy snow and if it's fattened fuzzy

it means bitter cold weather so that one everybody can find and it has to do with the orange band in the

middle of the of the caterpillar but that's something that people follow I get a lot of

information or questions about acorns how many acorns are dropping, how fast the squirrels

are scurring around.

If there's a lot of activity in that it's earlier than usual, then it means a long winter.

If there are numerous fogs during the month of August,

it means a rough winter.

Oh no.

The woodpecker sharing a tree, thicker than normal corn hucks,

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