By Heath Brown 

According to legend, each year, on February 2, a groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania emerges from hibernation to reveal what weather North America should expect over the next few months. On this day, Punxsutawney, a small town in western Pennsylvania with a population of just under 6,000 people, becomes the highlight of national news for the day. Legend has it that if the groundhog sees his shadow, he returns to hibernation, and cold weather is expected to persist for six more weeks. If the groundhog does not, warm weather is on the way. The official name of the weather forecasting groundhog is Punxsutawney Phil.

Despite the tradition’s bizarre nature, February 2 is widely recognized as Groundhog Day by the American and Canadian public. Over 775,000 people watched video coverage released by the Associated Press to see if Phil saw his shadow this year. How did a groundhog become such a staple in American and Canadian pop culture, and how accurate are Phil’s predictions?   

Bill Murray on an unofficial Groundhog Day movie poster. Image credit: User id-iom via Flickr.

Popularity for Groundhog Day exploded after the release of the movie Groundhog Day in 1993. It featured stars Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, and grossed at least $71,097,843 at the time, equivalent to $180,528,100 today. In the movie, a TV weatherman, played by Murray, relives the same day in Punxsutawney, reporting on the annual Groundhog Day celebrations over and over again. Although it is unclear how the movie is related to Groundhog Day aside from its setting, it did publicity wonders for the event due to its popularity.

Upper School English teacher and Match advisor Vlastik Svab said, “I watched the movie Groundhog Day five times in one day, during a snow day in the winter of 1994. It was totally worth it.” The movie’s pop culture impact, driven by its dedicated fanbase, is responsible for exponentially growing the relevancy of the day. According to Indianapolis’ FOX 59 News, about 5,000 people attended the Groundhog Day celebration each year before the movie debuted in 1993. This year, an estimated 35,000- 40,000 people attended the event.

The first American Groundhog Day celebration was on February 2, 1887, at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney. However, this was not the first time rodents were used to predict the weather. In Germany, whose immigrants brought the tradition to the United States, badgers had been used as weather forecasters since Medieval times, but apparently, badgers are hard to come by in the eastern United States, so they were replaced by a groundhog, which was easier to find.  

Clymer Freas, a former newspaper editor in Punxsutawney, is the orchestrator of the Groundhog Day celebration in America. A member of a groundhog hunting club called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, Freas and the group designated Phil as the nation’s official groundhog meteorologist. Today, the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club leads the Groundhog Day festivities. The group, comprised of 15 members, is tasked with continuing the legacy and traditions of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club by carrying on the legend of the famous weather-predicting groundhog. Due to the event’s popularity, the Inner Circle now hosts additional events around Groundhog Day. The Groundhog Ball, for example, is a traditional attire event on February 3, and the Annual Groundhog Banquet is a ceremony for the club on February 1. 

According to the club, there has only been one Punxsutawney Phil since 1887. This means Phil is 137 years old, despite the average lifespan for a groundhog being three years. The Inner Circle attributes Phil’s extraordinarily long lifespan to their “Elixir of Life” concoction. On the first Saturday of September at the Groundhog Picnic, Phil drinks the Elixir, which is said to add seven more years to his life. “The magic Elixir is something super secret, it’s been handed down from handler to handler through the years, it’s a concoction of a lot of different herbs and spices and some super secret formulas that only the handler knows,” according to Tom Dunkel, the President of the Punxsutawney Groundhog club. 

Tom Dunkel with Phil. Photo credit: Anthony Quintano via Wikimedia Commons.

Dunkel is responsible for communicating the results of the ceremony from Phil to the audience, according to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. As the only person allowed to translate Phil’s forecast, Dunkel interprets nods and purrs to determine whether Phil saw his shadow. The Inner Circle claims Phil has a 100% accuracy rate of predicting the weather, but data from the Stormfax Almanac only puts Phil’s lifetime accuracy rate at 39 percent, far below his advertised precision. Whether Dunkel or Phil is to blame for this inaccuracy is unknown. 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s Fox 43 reported that of the 127 of Phil’s recorded predictions since 1887 (there are ten years where no record of Phil’s prediction was kept), Phil has seen his shadow and predicted a prolonged winter 107 times. Only 20 times has Phil not seen his shadow and called for an early spring. Breaking tradition, Phil did not see his shadow this year, signifying that spring was coming early. He seems to have been right. 

People crowded in Punxsutawney for the Groundhog Day celebration. Photo credit: Anthony Quintano via Flickr.

Inspired by the popularity of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, other cities throughout North America have replicated weather-predicting ceremonies with groundhogs or other animals of their own. In Ontario, groundhog meteorologist Wiarton Willie makes his weather prediction on the same day as Phil. This annual ceremony is one of Ontario’s most popular events, as around 10,000 people flock to the festival annually. 

Starting as a largely unknown and unconventional German tradition in a small town in Pennsylvania, Groundhog Day is now nationally recognized by people from around the country and beyond. For most people, Groundhog Day is a day of good humor to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. The people in Punxsutawney see it as a day to distract themselves from winter monotony for a little while.