Groundhog Day in Lorain – 1950 & 1960

Well, Sunday is Groundhog Day – and regular readers of this blog know I like to post about it each year. It's interesting seeing how the newspapers treated it in the past. Sometimes they ignored it, other times it was big news.

On this post, I showed what the Lorain Day News reported for Groundhog Day 1906.

On this post, I featured various Groundhog Days in Lorain, including 1942, 1943, 1951, 1952 and 1962.

I wrote about Lorain's own weather forecasting groundhog in 1959 here.

My 2017 post included the 1947 Journal mention of the holiday. The 2018 post had the 1968 coverage. And last year, my Groundhog Day post highlighted the 1969 celebration, as well as a bunch of vintage postcards.

Onward to this year.

Seventy years ago, the Journal seemingly snubbed Punxsutawney Phil in favor of his Pennsylvania rival: the Quarryville groundhog. Here's what ran on the front page of the Lorain Journal on the eve of the holiday.

But on Groundhog Day itself, the newspaper apparently went with a local groundhog's forecast, noting, "the ground hog failed to see his shadow in Ohio today." Here's the front page article.

Ten years later, Punxsutawney Phil was once again on top, probably thanks to a savvy agent. His forecast was featured in this story that ran on the front page of the February 2, 1960 Journal. However, a local groundhog owned by Ron Clapper of E. 29th Street received photo honors.

Anyway, Happy Groundhog Day!