By: Annie Love, Groundspeak Lackey

Why wait until February to get a weather prediction from Punxsutawney Phil when you can get one from Snohomish Slew in January? Snohomish Slew is a real frog billed as “the Meteorologist Frognosticator extraordinaire and mighty small hero to all the weather weary.” Last Saturday, he forecast what type of weather the Northwest United States might expect in the next six weeks: more winter or an early spring.

Every year the quaint little town of Snohomish, Washington (located about 30 miles northeast of Seattle) welcomes Slew for a frog-filled celebration to predict the end of winter. It’s known as GroundFrog Day.

We here at Groundspeak think that you can trust frogs over groundhogs any day, so we took our beloved mascot Signal to witness Slew’s prediction. Signal is a life-sized frog, with GPS capabilities (of course). Fellow Lackey Nicole (Louie Bliss) and I had the pleasure of escorting Signal to the event. Lots of high-fives and hugs were to be had with the kids in attendance. Kids weren’t the only one who stopped to get their picture taken with Signal – in most cases it was the parent who really wanted the photo with our own geocaching legend.

The event included lots of dancing to frog remix versions of songs, hula-hooping, the GroundFrog royalty arriving via fire truck, and various booths to visit. After Slew took the stage to make his prediction, Signal was fortunate enough to shake webbed toes with the weather-casting celebrity.

What was Slew’s final prediction, you may be wondering? The final answer, as posted on the official website, was a bit vague: a Spring/Winter mix of weather is ahead.

“’Whether the weather be fine, Whether the weather be not, Whether the weather be cold, Whether the weather be hot, We’ll weather the weather, Whatever the weather, Whether we like it or not’ interpretation – neither 6 weeks of winter or spring, spring will come and sunny days, there’ll be a few, but still some cold days ahead, too.”

Either way, the current extended forecast for Seattle shows a lot of sunshine in our near future.  We think Signal may have had a little help with that.