Must You See Your Shadow?
I’ve been to Gobbler’s Knob, I just can’t remember why or when.
The home of Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania is not easy to get to, either, not being on the way to someplace or other. You have to want to go there. And yes, about 10,000 souls descended on Punxsutawney yesterday, as they annually do, to bear witness to Phil the groundhog’s winter predictions.
And once again, for the 109th time since 1877 to be precise, the groundhog has let us down by seeing his shadow; thus, six more weeks of winter.
By contrast, he has only failed to see his shadow 20 times since 1877.
(The other 20 times either the event was cancelled due to something or other or it was cloudy. One time, in 1943, Phil just… didn’t show up, refused to come out!)
This got me thinking about his success rate. Obviously, the little guy is going to see his shadow if it’s high noon and sunny. And let’s be honest, if you were roused from hibernation and walked out your front door to discover 10,000 people in your driveway, you’d turn around and go back inside as well.
The event was actually a fairly low-key regional affair until 1993 when Bill Murray released the movie Groundhog Day and it became a hit. Suddenly everybody wanted to come to Punxsutawney, even though the movie was actually filmed on location in Woodstock, Illinois!
Anyway, of those 129 predictions, how often has Phil actually got it right? Turns out the National Centers for Environmental Information, which is a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks just that! (Tax dollars at work folks!)
Anyway, the NCEI looks at national temperature averages and compares them with Phil’s predictions.
The result? Since 1877, Phil has been right approximately 30-35 percent of the time. I mean, for a groundhog, that’s not bad when you think about it. Could you predict the weather correctly one out of three times by looking at your shadow? I think not!
And listen, this isn’t some weird-o poppycock either. It’s science!
The event is organized by an organization called the Inner Circle – those are the guys in top hats and tuxedos. They are the ones who have learned how to communicate with Phil. The Inner Circle prepares two scrolls in advance of the actual ceremony. Then on the morning of Feb. 3, crowds gather around Phil’s home on Gobbler’s Knob to awaken Phil who comes on out and speaks to the Inner Circle in a language called Groundhogese. The president of the Inner Circle, through his possession of an ancient wooden cane, then interprets Phil’s message and directs the vice president to read the proper scroll to the crowd. And thus Phil’s annual prediction goes out into the world!
See, science!
Incidentally, speaking of science, this isn’t an ancestry thing. The story goes that this has been Phil since 1877. Every fall, the town holds a Groundhog Picnic where Phil is given groundhog punch called The Elixir of Life which explains his rodent immortality.
And here’s my favorite part of the story. Up until 2024, guess where Phil lived for most of the year before being taken to Gobbler’s Knob for the ceremony? He and his wife, Phyllis, live at the Punxsutawney Public Library! The couple became parents to two bouncing baby groundhogs that year and a permanent home was built for the whole family near the knob.
Anyway, back to my trip. I had a buddy who hailed from Pittsburgh back in my days of living in Philly, and I think that I visited Gobbler’s Knob during a trip back then. I recall a heck of a lot of signs and merch being sold. I certainly would have visited Phil had I known he lived in the library.
Maybe Griffin Free Public Library should have an animal mascot? Griff the… what? Griffin the… I can’t think of an animal that rhymes with Griffin. Help!
So now you know who to blame in the next month and half as we sludge through this long winter. But listen, it’s not all Phil’s fault.
There are dozens of towns across the states that have their own groundhog who makes predictions, including Woodstock Willie in the aforementioned Illinois town. There’s also Dunkirk Dave in Dunkirk, New York, Buckeye Chuck in Marion, Ohio and my favorite, Jimmy (just Jimmy) in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
By the way, since 2015, Eastford, Connecticut, has featured Scramble the Duck’s weather predictions. According to Scamble’s website, he has predicted the winter weather correctly 100% of the time. The Connecticut General Assembly wrote a proclamation saying that “Scramble is the most accurate weather-predicting duck in the Northern Hemisphere and possibly the World.” In case you’re wondering, Scramble, like Phil, predicted six more weeks of winter.
Groundhogs or ducks, either way, better bundle up!
Dan Szczesny is a freelance writer from Manchester. You can find more of his work on Substack.