How accurate are Groundhog Day predictions?

The handlers of Pennsylvania’s most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, say the furry rodent has failed to see his shadow, meaning he has “predicted” an early spring.

Legend says that if Phil sees his shadow, an additional six more weeks of winter weather can be expected.

The 20 little weather predictors chose to prepare for today – Groundhog Day – on Monday, making their own decisions about whether the groundhog would see his shadow.

A crowd gathered at Gobbler’s Knob early this morning, awaiting the emergence of the groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil. After a tap of a cane on Phil’s tree-trunk cage, his door was opened, and the animal emerged. Folklore tells us that a harsh winter is to come if woolly worms are seen in the fall to be plentiful, slow-moving and have thick coats with wide black bands. This year’s Phil, however, has not whiled away the winter underground like most of his species, also known as woodchucks.

With El Niño carrying warmer weather to much of the Northern United States, for some it’s no surprise that the groundhogs predict an early spring.

However in New Jersey, the local prognosticators objected to Phil’s prediction.

Groundhog Day acclaimed popularity with the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day“, which follows a Pittsburgh TV weatherman who finds himself in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again, as he covers an assignment at the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney.

Human meteorologists claim that Phil has a sketchy record and has been accurate just 40% of the time in the 129 years he has been predicting the weather.

This tradition, whose beginnings remain muddled, began about 130 years ago.

Three years later, in 2014, a groundhog was dropped on her head by New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, dying days later from internal injuries.