Americans don’t always make the best decisions, like believing that social media is a completely reliable source of news, or thinking that global warming isn’t going to eventually destroy the world. However, one of the biggest faults of all humans of this country might just be that some people trust a rodent to predict the ever-changing patterns of the weather.

Groundhog Day, a national event, occurs every year on February 2nd in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. This is where the groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil lives, hidden from the public until his spotlight moment in February. Supposedly, ever since the year 1887, this groundhog has been in charge of determining whether winter will continue for six more weeks or if spring will begin early.

Even though it may just seem like a harmless holiday, there are many questionable parts of Groundhog Day. For one thing, Punxsutawney Phil is clearly not the same groundhog from 1887, since groundhogs only live for about six to eight years. Legend says that Phil drinks a magical potion every summer that gives him seven more years of life. Besides this ridiculousness, I still have concerns. Do people actually spend time and resources to search for groundhog replacements every seven years? Is this really what it takes to please the public?

Another sketchy aspect of Groundhog Day is that Punxsutawney Phil has his own elite fan club. These people, called the ‘Inner Circle’ wear top hats and supposedly speak ‘Groundhoganese’ to communicate with Phil. While many people find a joke in this situation, tens of thousands of people travel to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on February 2nd to suspensefully await the prediction of the groundhog.

Besides the oddness of the whole idea, there is the fact that most of the time, this groundhog is totally wrong in his predictions about the seasons. Over time, the groundhog has predicted 99 times that winter will continue for six weeks, and 15 times that spring will arrive early. According to the National Climatic Data Center, Phil’s forecasts as a whole have only been correct 39% of the time. Since the year 1969, that number has dropped to 36% accuracy for the animal. Even for a groundhog, this number is rather low. Statistically, flipping a coin for each year would have been about 10% more accurate overall than Phil’s determinations.

Therefore, if you’re going to place trust in anything besides meteorologists for envisioning the weather, place it in a coin. Or a bowl of fruit. Anything, really, would probably be better than a groundhog.