The seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators, emerged reluctantly but alertly, in Punxsutawney PA, and stated in groundhog-ese: “spring will be early, it’s a certainty.”
Get out your bathing suit and suntan lotion folks, you’ll be laying out on the beach in no time, according to Pennsylvania’s most beloved weatherman, Punxsutawney Phil, who did not see his shadow on the morning of February 2.
On the hill known as “Gobbler’s Knob,” made famous by the hit Bill Murray comedy “Groundhog Day,” leaders of the Groundhog Club pulled Phil from his resting place as he searched for his absent shadow before delivering some rather refreshing news.
“At sunrise on Groundhog Day, members of Punxsutawney Phil’s top hat-wearing inner circle revealed the groundhog declared: ‘Spring will be early, it’s a certainty,'” reports Fox News. “Awoken by the crowd’s chants of ‘Phil!’ the groundhog was hoisted in the air for the assembly to hail before making his decision. He then grasped the glove of a handler as a member of his inner circle announced that spring would come early this year.”
According to Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean, Phil’s prediction for an early spring may be a sign of good omens, since he usually sees his shadow. In fact, Sunday’s prediction of an early spring may actually be the 21st time in over 100 years.
“It’s not very often that Phil predicts an early spring, but the groundhog, my friends, predicted an early spring,” she said.
Going all the way back to 1887, the groundhog has seen his shadow 103 times, as opposed to the 19 times he did not. No record exists for the other 10 times in the late 19th century.
The record does reflect, however, that groundhog is typically wrong.
“There is no predictive skill for the groundhog during the most recent years of the analysis,” according to a report released this week by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina.
Harmeet Kaur at CNN cautioned people against getting too excited over an early Spring, given Phil’s less-than-stell track record of weather predictions.
“In the past decade, Phil has predicted a longer winter seven times and an early spring three times,” wrote Kaur. “He was right about 40% of the time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which says the groundhog shows ‘no predictive skill.'”
“You’re better off trying to decide what the rest of February and March will look like by flipping a coin,” said CNN meteorologist Judson Jones.
Phil’s handlers, however, believe that Phil has a 100% accuracy rate by saying his predictions are not necessarily geographically specific.
“According to lore, the president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club is the only person who can interpret Phil’s message,” continued Kaur. “Every year, the groundhog sits on his tree stump and conveys his prediction to the club president, who then directs the vice president to read from a scroll that corresponds with the year’s forecast.”
Believe it or not, Groundhog Day actually has Christian roots, stemming from the European holiday of Candlemas, or the Christian “festival of lights” on February 2. It originated with the Germans, who built the tradition upon looking to the hedgehog as a predictor of weather; German settlers in Pennsylvania later switched to the groundhog.