Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil sees shadow, predicting longer winter | US news

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Sunday and predicted six more weeks of wintry weather, his top-hatted handlers announced to a raucus, record-sized crowd at Gobbler’s Knob in Pennsylvania.

Phil was welcomed with chants of “Phil, Phil, Phil,” and pulled from a hatch on his tree stump shortly after sunrise before a member of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club read from a scroll in which he boasted: “Only I know – you can’t trust AI.”

The woodchuck’s weather forecast is an annual ritual that goes back more than a century in western Pennsylvania, with far older roots in European folklore, but it took Bill Murray’s 1993 Groundhog Day movie to transform the event into what it is today, with tens of thousands of revelers at the scene and imitators scattered around the United States and beyond.

When Phil is deemed to have not seen his shadow, that is said to usher in an early spring. When he does see it, there will be six more weeks of winter.

The crowd was treated to a fireworks show, confetti and live music that ranged from the Ramones to Pennsylvania Polka as they awaited sunrise and Phil’s emergence. Governor Josh Shapiro, local and state elected officials and a pair of pageant winners were among the dignitaries at the scene.

Phil has predicted a longer winter far more often than an early spring, and one effort to track his accuracy concluded he was right less than half the time. What six more weeks of winter means is subjective.

Tom Dunkel, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, says there are two types of people who make the trek to Gobbler’s Knob: the faithful seeking to validate their beliefs and the doubters who want to confirm their skepticism.

Phil communicated his forecast to Dunkel through “Groundhog-ese” with the help of a special cane that Dunkel has inherited as the club’s leader. It’s not as if he speaks in English words.

“He’ll like wink, he’ll purr, he’ll chatter, he’ll – you know – nod,” Dunkel said.

Attendance is free but it cost $5 to take a bus and avoid a 1 mile (1.6km) trek from the middle of town to the stage where the prediction was made, some 80 miles (123km) north-east of Pittsburgh.

Keith Post, his wife and a friend have watched the Groundhog Day movie in each of the past five years and decided this was the time to make the trip from Ohio to witness the event.

“We booked rooms almost a year in advance and we’re here,” Post said. “We’re doing it.”

A new welcome center opened four years ago and the club is working on an elaborate second living space for Phil and family so they can split time between Gobbler’s Knob and Phil’s longtime home at the town library. The club also put up large video screens and more powerful speakers this year to help attendees in the back of the crowd follow the proceedings.

Phil has a wife, Punxsutawney Phyllis, and two pups born this spring, Shadow and Sunny, although his family did not join him on stage for the big event. The groundhog family eats fruits and vegetables, get daily visits from Dereume and sees a veterinarian at least once a year.

The club’s lore is that Phil is the same woodchuck who has been issuing weather forecasts for the past century, thanks to an “elixir of life” that keeps him immortal.

“There’s only one Phil, and it’s not something that can be handed down,” Dunkel said. “Just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, there’s only one.”