Milltown Mel's death may have caused winter storms

By Cam Lawrence

Art by Emily Smith 

On Thursday, Feb. 4, 2022, a winter storm hit Memphis, sending branches, trees, and telephone poles down to the ground, leaving many of St. Mary’s students bundled up in blankets and sweatshirts. Only two days before this, Milltown Mel, beloved and famous groundhog from New Jersey who graced the world with his weather predictions, died. What’s worse, he died on Groundhog Day, hours before he was to make his prediction.

Is this a coincidence? I think not. 

With Milltown Mel now being unable to predict the seasons, we must come to the horrifying truth: winter will last forever. This truth revealed itself on Feb. 4 when ice swept through Memphis and the East Coast as a whole. Shivering in our powerless and heatless houses, the cold did, in fact, bother us anyway. 

Astrid Balink (12) said, “[The groundhog’s death] is a representation of how nothing is really going to go our way… especially since my power went out for four days and the temperature was 37 degrees.”  

The tradition of a groundhog predicting the seasons has long been criticized, but Milltown Mel did it better than any other. His chucking that spring was to come, his clucking that winter would last a bit longer, and his annual presence always held so much hope for the good that remains within us all. 

While we will forever treasure his life and his work, we must also acknowledge that the ice storm in Memphis that caused so much catastrophe was only two days after his death. Perhaps, had he lived, he would have warned us that winter was staying. Or perhaps, he could have saved us. 

If you are still sleeping next to the fireplace or sleeping under scratchy hotel sheets with spotty Wifi, look out your window at the stars. May the spirit of Milltown Mel take pity on you and call spring to come.