Even people not from this area know that southern Wisconsin has been inundated with rain and flooding.  What is creepy is how familiar I am with the places affected by the disaster.

The WORT Festival is where these “festival people” first seem to come out of hibernation.  Like various mammals native to this area, they’ve shed their winter coats, and walk with a bit of spring in the step, as if a burden had been removed from their shoulders.

The weather is so bad in Wisconsin that even the local Doppler radar decides it wants to go a to warmer climate.  I kid you not.

I pulled the curtain aside and looked outside.  It did not look pretty.  It was raining out, and the streets were covered with a layer of slush.  The three-foot-high snowdrifts were mixing with the rain and turning the sidewalks into slushy canals two to three inches deep.  The few pedestrians who were on the street were trying to find solid parts of the sidewalk to walk on as if they were rocks on a shallow lake.

In reading about the history of Groundhog Day, I learned that German immigrants brought the tradition to Pennsylvania. Except that in Germany, the bringer of the news was not a groundhog, but a badger. The “badger day” tradition became “Groundhog Day” here because badgers could not be found—they are reportedly not native to Pennsylvania.  However they are native in the Midwest and West.