USA TODAY International Edition
Groundhog Day is Thursday. Will Phil see his shadow?
Roly- poly rodent cute, not consistent
It’s that time of year again when meteorologists step aside to let a furry rodent make its famed weather forecast.
Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s celebrity groundhog, will be coaxed from his burrow in western Pennsylvania early Thursday as an anxious nation watches to find out whether we’ll have an early spring or six more miserable weeks of cold and snow.
According to legend, if it’s sunny and Phil sees his shadow, the scared groundhog will return to his burrow, and the USA will endure six more weeks of winter. If it’s cloudy Feb. 2, the critter won’t see his shadow and will leave his burrow, meaning winter will soon end and an early start to spring is coming.
The forecast for Thursday morning in Punxsutawney, Pa., calls for mostly cloudy skies and a slight chance of snow, but Phil is a fickle fuzzball, so who knows what he’ll do?
The Climate Prediction Center, in its official forecast for February released Tuesday, calls for warmer- than- average temperatures for almost the entire USA.
Unfortunately, based on past weather data, “there is no predictive skill for the groundhog during the most recent years of the analysis,” according to a report released this week by the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, N. C.
Flipping a coin might be as accurate as Phil. Since 1988, the groundhog was “right” 14 times and “wrong” 15 times. In other words, only 14 times did the national average temperature for the remainder of February match what would be expected based on what the groundhog predicted.
Last year, Phil was spot on: The rodent didn’t see his shadow, so winter should have been over. February and March ended up warmer than average across the nation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Every state in the contiguous USA had an above- average temperature in March.
Although Phil is the most famous groundhog, other furry forecasters include West Virginia’s French Creek Freddie, Georgia’s Gen. Beauregard Lee, Ohio’s Buckeye Chuck, North Carolina’s Sir Walter Wally, Louisiana’s Cajun Groundhog, Alabama’s Smith Lake Jake, Wisconsin’s Jimmy and New York’s Staten Island Chuck ( full name: Charles G. Hogg).