#Staten Island Chuck

[joen-lenawley]

only staten island chuck is actually able to predict the weather. all the others are frauds /j

[dinosaurwithablog]

Punxsutawney Phil says that there are 6 more weeks of winter because he saw his shadow. Punxsutawney Phil lives in Pennsylvania at Gobbler's Knob. He is the groundhog who I've listened to for most of my life. The groundhog named Staten Island Chuck who is supposed to be more accurate, saw his shadow, and therefore, he predicts an early spring. In Georgia, the groundhog named General Lee saw his shadow so he says that there's six more weeks of winter. In Ohio, Buckeye Chuck didn't see his shadow and says that we'll have an early spring. I guess that we'll find out who is right in the next month or two. I'm happy either way because I love the spring, but i take want some snow.

Have a very happy Groundhog Day!!! 😊

[thelesbianthespianposts]

Happy 10th Anniversary of Mayor Bill de Blasio dropping Staten Island Chuck, killing him. Truly a Groundhog Day to remember.

[philosopherking1887]

Based on the prediction record, either the sun never shines in Staten Island, or Chuck is aware of global warming.

truly is The poster of all time. This is my favorite political conspiracy theory now.

[buckcluck67]

1 stage Staten Island

[thesmegalodon]

Sorry didn't want to crowd that post about Groundhogs, but I recently read a paper about groundhog day and how American groundhogs are more a hodgepodge of unreliability. There is not one Master Groundhog, and it's clear some of these groundhogs are clearly slacking (I jest!)

Famous American groundhog Punxsutawney Phil (from the OG Pennsylvania) has only a 30-40% accuracy rate depending on how long ago you measure. And only a handful of groundhogs (out of 41) are above 50%

Staten Island Chuck and Chuckles (from Connecitcut) are the most consistently accurate groundhogs at 60% with Sir Walter Wally ranks about 58% HOWEVER all 3 are massively outshined by Beardsley Bart (pairie dog) and Sand Mountain Sam (oppossum) at 78% and 75% respectively (José Luiz Martiéz, CT Mirror 2022) Now this gets into "how do you measure if a guess is right" territory for these exact numbers so some of this is all over the place. Wiarton Willie gets reported as having a 25% accuracy rate a 39% accuracy rate (Canadian Encyclopedia) or a 54% accuracy rate (Ross et al 2021)

But the MOST ACCURATE GROUNDHOG is by far the Canadian Oil Springs Ollie with an 83% accuracy rating. The worst is Buckeye Chuck with a 10% accuracy rating who, out of the last 15 or so predictions, was wrong about 14 of them While there was no significant relationship between latitude and correctness when measured, a big problem is that groundhogs actually emerge in March, not Febuary and at least in Canada that means groundhogs have to be woken up to predict the weather or else they live in a zoo and are not out there in nature reporting from the field

It is unlikely any more scientific evaluation of the accuracy of animal meteorologists will be conducted with hard rigour, but it would be fun to see! I hope these Fun Facts were interesting!

^^^ groundhog meteorologist facts for your monday morning

[thewhimsyturtle]

Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter today?! But, newly ranked #1 most accurate groundhog Staten Island Chuck predicted an early spring! Is it safe to come out now or not?!

[sophie-frm-mars]

I found out today that there was another groundhog like Punxatawny Phil called Staten Island Chuck and he's no longer with us because NYC mayor Bill Deblasio dropped him like Bane dropped Batman and then there was a zoo coverup to pretend he didn't

[builttextough]

Charles Margiotta

1,000 meter Row

20 Power Cleans (135/95 lb)

1,000 meter Row

20 Power Snatches (135/95 lb)

1,000 meter Row

20 Thrusters (135/95 lb)

1,000 meter Row

his Firefighter Hero WOD is dedicated to Charles Margiotta, FDNY, Battalion 22, who was killed on September 11, 2001.

There’s a story — so old it must be true — about the time some wannabe hardcase was trying to pick a fight at Demyan’s Hofbrau in Stapleton, another piece of Staten Island that isn’t here anymore.

“You Chuck Margiotta?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard you were tough. You don’t look so tough.”

The guy took a swing. Mr. Margiotta took it, and turned back to face his attacker, who braced for the mayhem that was certain to follow. “If that’s the best you’ve got,” Mr. Margiotta told him, “you better sit next to me and have a beer.”

Lt. Charles (Chuck) Margiotta was a tough guy — a football player, movie stuntman and 20-year veteran of the Fire Department — long before the morning of Sept. 11, when he heard the news on his truck radio and drove to the nearest firehouse in time to jump on the rig with the guys from Rescue Co. 5 in Concord. Now, he is among the thousands missing as a result of the attack on the World Trade Center.

But beneath his forbidding exterior — the stern facade, the tattoos and 240 pounds of muscle — was a gardener who nurtured tomato plants alongside Ladder Co. 85 in New Dorp; a caring neighbor who ran into the street in his pajamas to help an elderly woman who had fallen; a loving father who coached his kids’ basketball, softball and soccer teams.

“He was the nicest tough guy I ever met,” said Jimmy Ernst, a classmate at Monsignor Farrell High School. For every burning building he ran into, there are three stories about the college student who brought stranded classmates home at Thanksgiving; the Samaritan who plowed every sidewalk on the block when it snowed; the hunter who stopped to give mouth-to-straw-to-beak resuscitation to a bird that had fallen from a tree.

“He was the champion of the underdog,” said his brother, Mike. “If you were the kid nobody wanted in a choose-up game, you wouldn’t be his last pick. You’d be his first pick.”

Mr. Margiotta, 44, lived most of his life on the same block in Meiers Corners, where he knew everyone by name. He played football almost as long — at Monsignor Farrell, where he was a hard-blocking tight end and a member of the National Honor Society; at Brown University, where he was an undersized nose guard, and later for the Fire Department team and in the Staten Island Touch Tackle League. When Brown’s 1976 Ivy League champions were honored at their 20th reunion, his teammates chose Mr. Margiotta to speak for them.

But football wasn’t his first sport. He was an indefatigable outdoorsman, having learned to hunt and fish at an early age. “That was his passion,” said his father, Charles Vito. “If you were in the woods, lost, you wanted to be with Chuck.”

Marriage and children didn’t curb that enthusiasm for the outdoors. He just rearranged his schedule, often leaving in the dead of night to go hunting, so he could be home to coach a soccer game later that day. He was the youth basketball director at St. Rita’s R.C. Parish in Meiers Corners.

After graduating Brown with a double major in English and sociology, Mr. Margiotta worked for General Motors before being called by the Fire Department in 1981. He was first in his class at probie school and worked 15 years at Ladder Co. 40 in Harlem, earning eight departmental citations. After his promotion to lieutenant in 1996 he was assigned to Staten Island’s 22nd Battalion, and spent the bulk of that time as an interim lieutenant at Ladder Co. 85.

At the time of his death, the paperwork had just been finalized on his permanent assignment to Ladder Co. 83 in Westerleigh. In his “spare” time, Mr. Margiotta found time to work as a stuntman in dozens of feature films, including “Hannibal”; as a private investigator, and for 20 years as a substitute school teacher for the New York City Board of Education.

“He wasn’t happy,” his brother said, “unless he was doing four things at once.” He was driving home from Brooklyn after working a “mutual” for another officer Sept. 11 when he heard the news on the radio, turned off the Staten Island Expressway and found the Rescue Co. 5 truck ready to go.

His wife was working, so Mr. Margiotta called his mother from the speeding rig, concerned that because he wasn’t on a duty roster, nobody would know where he was.

By then, the men from Rescue Co. 5 were minutes from the World Trade Center, close enough to see the horror awaiting them.

[klapollo]

not to be a foot soldier of capitalism but the themed entertainment boom of the mid to late 90s was actually so fun. everyone was trying to be domestically disney and it made some shit so entertaining. there was a place in nyc called jekyll and hyde that was a horror-themed club full of animatronics and ooky spooky shit, and they had a hearse that would drive around the city with skeletons in the seats. on staten island there was a little restaurant called cartoon universe for a very brief time that was kinda like a local chuck e cheese with all these themed rooms. the outside was very attention grabbing as it looked like a giant cartoon dragon was devouring the building.

[ashknife]

Every Groundhog Day, I look forward to seeing the bitter rivalry of Staten Island Chuck and Punxsutawney Phil, as they almost never agree.

Except this year. Early spring.

Better hunker down. It's apocalypse tonight!

[so-much-for-subtlety]

as someone who is conscious* and has a subjective inner life, one of the most amazing benefits I think is that you can construct whole other people WITH YOUR MIND. Like that’s so amazing! Today I was walking and invented a New York stand up comedian, with that Staten Island accent, doing a quirky set IN MY MIND. And it’s not like I’m pretending to be that person, because I’m there too listening to his bit, and chucking to the jokes. But that’s all me! And hey somehow this imaginary person that I’ve invented is telling jokes, but somehow the routine still takes me by surprise. That’s just weird. And then I think about how (apparently) some people don’t imagine sounds, like they can’t ‘hear’ music then they think about it, or they can’t ‘hear’ people talk when they imagine that. So they means some people don’t have these imaginary secret people living in their minds RENT FREE.

[ailurinae]

Exactly.

Although, it is a kind of marmot (genus Marmota), and there are marmots in Europe and Asia (and other parts of NA). Mostly in mountains and really cold areas though. Ground squirrels as a whole are even more widespread.

But also the Groundhog Day lore now tends to focus on specific groundhogs or rather lineages of groundhogs. Notably Punxsutawney Phil, also some others like Wiarton Willie, Shubenacadie Sam, Jimmy the Groundhog, Dunkirk Dave, and Staten Island Chuck. Which are all in the US. Seem to be some in Canada as well.

The Wikipedia entry for Groundhog day does mention this:

The Germans had a tradition of marking Candlemas (February 2) as "Badger Day" (Dachstag), on which if a badger emerging from its den encountered a sunny day, thereby casting a shadow, it heralded four more weeks of winter.[citation needed]

The original weather-predicting animal in Germany had been the bear, another hibernating mammal, but when they grew scarce, the lore became altered.[10] Similarity to the groundhog lore has been noted for the German formula: Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmeßwoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche ("If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas-week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole").[a][11] A slight variant is found in a collection of weather lore (Bauernregeln, lit. "farmers' rules") printed in Austria in 1823.[12]

As well as some similar ideas in other areas (German immigrants in Pennsylvania are the origin in the US) . But doesn't sound like other places have made it into a big deal day like the US groundhog day.

Buddy most countries don't even have groundhogs. Basically just Canada and the US have groundhogs

[seositetool]

Wake-Up Weather: record heat on the menu for February 3rd

Monday, February 3rd, 2025 Summary: Temperatures today could break a record maximum low meaning a record warm start to the day. Temperatures are expected to break a record forecast high temperature set back in 1976 of 82°. While we stayed just shy of the record yesterday, I think we take the cake today. Heading into the rest of the week more in agreement with Staten Island Chuck who indicated an…

[sevenstevearmy]

this is my favorite holiday

[brillianttimbre]

On this Groundhog Day, Staten Island Chuck predicts an early spring.