Study: Your Winter Despair Predicts Groundhog Day Outcome

By BD Wahlberg

Feeling empty and numb? Haven’t had a date since August? Missing your 11am class? The cold driving you inside where your only friends are your dark room and blankets? Are those friends dirty because you lack even the energy to do laundry?

Then you’re in luck! A new study out of Pittsburgh University has shown that the worse you feel and the more you ruminate on those feelings of worthlessness, the more likely it is to be cloudy on Groundhog Day, meaning Punxsutawney Phil won’t see his shadow, which means Spring will come early! As long as you keep telling yourself that the people in your life are stupid for liking you, come Feb. 2, we won’t be slated to trudge through six more weeks of winter!

A meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies, all on you, have found that the power of this prediction increases to clear causation when you remember the winters when you were a kid, you know, when you used to have fun and look forward to snow days. We’ve also seen a strong interaction between the later you stay up watching video game speed-runs, the amount of daylight you waste, and the more times you let your Ramen-exclusive bowl go unwashed.

And, just in case you were starting to feel better, now that you know that you have such an influence over this important moment in our seasonal cycle, go check your phone. She hasn’t called. And she won’t.