Famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil is forecasting another 6 weeks of winter on Groundhog Day 2025. Today marks the 138th time the holiday tradition was celebrated in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. While these annual forecasts are full of folklore fun, there is little link between what happens here and how the weather will evolve in subsequent weeks.
As the sun rises over the small Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney, handlers associated with their Groundhog Club bring him out of his shelter and proclaim his forecast for the year, reading from a scroll they say is translated from fictional Groundhogese:
What a way to start a Sunday fun day.
You always said you’d make it here one day.
To this place, barely big enough to contain ya.
To this sweet Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania
We’re all here with the elements combined
Where Mother Nature meets Father Time
To hear the truth – Is that a gray sky?
Only I know (you can’t trust A.I.)
It’s Groundhog Day and maybe life is on a loop
But I miss my burrow, I miss my coop
So I’m headed back down! There’s a shadow up here!
Get ready for 6 more weeks of winter this year!
According to folklore, when the groundhog can see its shadow, there will be another 6 weeks of winter. If he doesn’t see his shadow, folklore says spring will arrive early.
While the club claims high accuracy, others dispute the findings: the National Weather Service says he only has a 50-50 track record.
A former president of the Groundhog Club spoke with a Weatherboy meteorologist to discuss the tradition, adding additional color to the holiday: “The tradition of Phil started in our homeland of Germany. Our ancestors were farmers and eagerly awaited the end of the long German winter so we could begin the process of getting our fields ready for planting our crops. In Germany there were no groundhogs but we did have hedgehogs. They served the same purpose as Phil here. Unfortunately, in the middle of the cold Germanic winter, our hedgehog usually ended up on someone’s dinner plate.”
As these German farmers settled in Pennsylvania, they wanted to hold on to this tradition of the hedgehogs predicting the end of winter. But, finding no hedgehogs in the United States, they settled on a much bigger and furrier rodent, the groundhog. “Our ancestors found this particularly handsome groundhog here and named him Phil Sowerby. We treat him like gold.”
The Groundhog’s forecast is already at odds with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center outlook. According to that outlook, much of the U.S. will return to normal or above-normal temperatures, suggesting spring may be here sooner than the Groundhog “thinks.”
