this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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xkcd
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You gotta have some standards. If you use a different rodent every year, you can’t realistically compare the results with one another. Who knows how wildly the measurement error varies from species to species?
I mean, the one thing the comic gets wrong is that we never really settled on a standard, there are like 36 different regional rodents that are used., my favourite being Wiarton Willie:
Oh wow! That's amazing.
Americans will use any unit besides the metric system /s
Groundhog (Gr), a unit of uncertainty in weather predictions. The value of 1 Gr means the prediction is as good as pulling it out of a hat.