Punxsutawney Phil Spots His Shadow on Groundhog Day, Heralding Six More Weeks of Winter

The legendary groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, has predicted winter will persist for six more weeks after seeing his shadow on Thursday in western Pennsylvania. 

At the yearly Groundhog Day event at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a member of the animal’s “Inner Circle” read a scroll that Phil, “the seer of seers,” supposedly selected using his native tongue of “Groundhog-ese.”

“I see that everyone knows their part, and I am merely the sage, but above all else, I see a shadow on my stage, and so no matter how you measure, it’s six more weeks of winter weather,” the speaker announced in a video shared to Twitter by Newsmax. 

Thousands of people have traveled to Punxsutawney to watch Phil make his prediction. 

“We have 6,000 people that live here and it swells to 20 or 30,000,” WTAE quoted Punxsutawney Chamber of Commerce President Katie Laska as saying. 

Though the Indiana Department of Natural Resources notes that the average lifespan of a groundhog is just three years, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette hyped the lore that the current Phil is the same groundhog from more than a century ago, and noted that the tradition’s roots are tied to Christianity: 

 The custom dates back to an early Christian tradition known as Candlemas, in which celebrants declared that clear skies on Candlemas meant a longer winter. Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers brought the tradition with them.

As for Phil, he rose to fame after appearing in Punxsutawney’s local newspaper in 1886. A member of a groundhog hunting group known as “The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club” used his clout at the paper to trumpet Phil, named after King Phillip, as the only official weather prognosticating groundhog. 

Phil’s popularity grew from there, and the first of many annual Groundhog Day treks to Gobbler’s Knob followed in 1887.

In recognition of his longstanding tradition, the Weather Discovery Center inducted Phil into the Meteorologist Hall of Fame a few weeks ago, describing the groundhog as “a celebrity well-known in meteorological circles throughout the world.”

While Phil’s legend has grown over the past 137 years, the Associated Press noted in 2020, that the groundhog’s caretakers make his prediction “ahead of time.”

You can follow Michael Foster on Twitter at @realmfoster.