Punxsutawney Phil predicts early spring for Groundhog Day 2024
- Punxsutawney Phil’s weather forecast was announced in Gobbler’s Knob
- Phil predicts more winter more frequently than he sees an early spring
- NOAA looked at his record last year and put his accurate rate at about 40%
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PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa (NewsNation) — It’s Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil made his prediction on what the weather will be like for the next six weeks.
Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow — presaging early springlike weather.
The expert groundhog made his annual winter weather forecast Friday at Gobbler’s Knob In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the scene of the country’s largest and most well-known Groundhog Day celebration.
Members of Punxsutawney Phil’s “Inner Circle,” with roots in the late 19th century, revealed Phil’s prediction.
“We are merely messengers. Punxsutawney Phil sees it, doesn’t see it, we wait till dawn on February 2, said Inner Circle Vice President Dan McGinley. “It’s Phil’s prediction.”
About 10,000 people have made their way in recent years to Punxsutawney, where festivities begin in the dead of night and culminate in the midwinter forecast.
“We have people who celebrate their birthday every year, they come every year,” McGinley said. “Families come back every year, they make vacations every year. So we want to meet their tradition with our tradition. So we try to keep things as it was. We’ve been doing this since 1887.”
Phil predicts more winter far more often than he sees an early spring, not a bad bet for February and March in western Pennsylvania. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admiration’s National Center for Environmental Information took a look at his record last year and put his accuracy rate at about 40%.
The tradition of celebrating the midpoint between the shortest day of the year on the winter solstice and the spring equinox goes back many centuries in European farm life.
There are more than a dozen active groundhog clubs in Pennsylvania, some dating back to the 1930s, and weather-predicting groundhogs have appeared in at least 28 U.S. states and Canadian provinces.
The 1993 blockbuster film “Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray, fueled interest in Punxsutawney Phil and inspired informal observations far and wide.
When he’s not making his annual prognostication, Phil lives in a customized space beside the Punxsutawney Memorial Library, with a window where library patrons can check out his burrow. Back in 2009, library workers said Phil had somehow escaped three times, climbing into the library ceiling and dropping into offices about 50 feet away. He wasn’t injured.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
