PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. — Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Sunday and predicted six more weeks of wintry weather, his top-hatted handlers announced to a raucus, record-sized crowd at Gobbler’s Knob in Pennsylvania.
Groundhog Club handler A.J. Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil on Gobbler’s Knob on Sunday in Punxsutawney, Pa.
Phil was welcomed with chants of “Phil, Phil, Phil,” and pulled from a hatch on his tree stump shortly after sunrise before a member of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club read from a scroll in which he boasted: “Only I know — you can't trust A.I.”
The woodchuck’s weather forecast is an annual ritual that goes back more than a century in western Pennsylvania, with far older roots in European folklore, but it took Bill Murray’s 1993 “Groundhog Day” movie to transform the event into what it is today, with tens of thousands of revelers at the scene and imitators scattered around the United States and beyond.
When Phil is deemed to have not seen his shadow, that is said to usher in an early spring. When he does see it, there will be six more weeks of winter.
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The crowd was treated to a fireworks show, confetti and live music that ranged from the Ramones to “Pennsylvania Polka” as they awaited sunrise and Phil's emergence. Gov. Josh Shapiro, local and state elected officials and a pair of pageant winners were among the dignitaries at the scene.
Self-employed New York gingerbread artist Jon Lovitch has attended the event for 33 years.
“I like the cold, you know, and this is probably the best and biggest midwinter party in the entire world,” Lovitch said in Punxsutawney. “And it’s just a really good time.”
The crowd watches the festivities while waiting for Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, to come out and make his prediction during the 139th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler’s Knob on Sunday in Punxsutawney, Pa.
Phil has predicted a longer winter far more often than an early spring, and one effort to track his accuracy concluded he was right less than half the time. What six more weeks of winter means is subjective.
Tom Dunkel, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, says there are two types of people who make the trek to Gobbler's Knob: the faithful seeking to validate their beliefs and the doubters who want to confirm their skepticism.
Phil communicated his forecast to Dunkel through “Groundhog-ese” with the help of a special cane that Dunkel has inherited as the club's leader. It's not as if he speaks in English words.
“He’ll like wink, he’ll purr, he’ll chatter, he’ll — you know — nod,” Dunkel said.
Attendance is free but it cost $5 to take a bus and avoid a 1-mile trek from the middle of town to the stage where the prediction was made, some 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The need for so many buses is why the local schools, where the sports mascot is the Chucks, close when Groundhog Day falls on a weekday.
Keith Post, his wife and a friend have watched the “Groundhog Day” movie in each of the past five years and decided this was the time to make the trip from Ohio to witness the event.
“We booked rooms almost a year in advance and we’re here,” Post said. “We’re doing it.”
A new welcome center opened four years ago and the club is working on an elaborate second living space for Phil and family so they can split time between Gobbler's Knob and Phil's longtime home at the town library. The club also put up large video screens and more powerful speakers this year to help attendees in the back of the crowd follow the proceedings.
"It’s a holiday where you don’t really owe anyone anything,” said A.J. Dereume, who among the club's 15-member inner circle serves as Phil's handler and held him up to loud cheers on Sunday. “You’re grasping onto the belief, you know, in something that’s just fun to believe in.”
The crowd watches the festivities while waiting for Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, to come out and make his prediction during the 139th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler’s Knob on Sunday in Punxsutawney, Pa.
Jackie Handley agreed a year ago to visit Punxsutawney for the first time to help a friend check off an item on their bucket list. They were ready for the subfreezing temperatures.
“It’s once in a lifetime — we’re probably not going to come back. And we have tons of warm clothes," said Handley, who lives in Falls Church, Virginia.
After the forecast was made, club members and Phil posed for photos with people from the crowd.
Phil has a wife, Punxsutawney Phyllis, and two pups born this spring, Shadow and Sunny, although his family did not join him on stage for the big event. The groundhog family eats fruits and vegetables, get daily visits from Dereume and sees a veterinarian at least once a year.
The club's lore is that Phil is the same woodchuck who has been issuing weather forecasts for the past century, thanks to an “elixir of life” that keeps him immortal.
“There's only one Phil, and it's not something that can be handed down,” Dunkel said. “Just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, there's only one.”
There have been Groundhog Day events in at least 28 U.S. states and Canadian provinces. In Pennsylvania, groundhogs predicted more winter Sunday in Mount Joy, Dover, York, Lebanon County and Lancaster County's Manheim Township. But at the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge in Quarryville, Octoraro Orphie was said to predict spring is on the way.
In Georgia, about 50 miles southeast of Atlanta in Jackson, a groundhog named “General Beauregard Lee” saw his shadow, his handlers declared, meaning six more weeks of winter. It was said that Shubenacadie Sam at a wildlife park in Nova Scotia, Canada, also saw her shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter.
6 things to know about Groundhog Day
What are the holiday's origins?
Celtic people across Europe marked the four days that are midway between the winter solstice, the spring equinox, the summer solstice and the fall equinox. What the Celts called Imbolc is also around when Christians celebrate Candlemas, timed to Joseph and Mary's presentation of Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem.
Ancient people would watch the sun, stars and animal behavior to guide farming practices and other decisions, and the practice of watching an animal’s emergence from winter hibernation to forecast weather has roots in a similar German tradition involving badgers or bears. Pennsylvania Germans apparently substituted the groundhog, endemic to the eastern and midwestern United States.
Historians have found a reference in an 1841 diary to groundhog weather forecasts in early February among families of German descent in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, according to the late Don Yoder, a University of Pennsylvania professor whose 2003 book about Groundhog Day explored the Celtic connection.
Yoder concluded the festival has roots in “ancient, undoubtedly prehistoric, weather lore.”
In photo: Kutztown University anthropology professor William W. Donner displays a Groundhog Lodge's sign during an interview in Kutztown, Pa., Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. These lodges began as a way to preserve and celebrate Pennsylvania Dutch culture and traditions.
Why is it celebrated in Punxsutawney?
Punxsutawney is an area that Pennsylvania Germans settled — and in the late 1880s started celebrating the holiday by picnicking, hunting and eating groundhogs.
Members of Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, organized in 1899, care for Phil at a customized space beside Punxsutawney Memorial Library — where there's a window with a view into the creature's burrow.
The Punxsutawney groundhog makes predictions but he's not always predictable. The designated groundhog emerged before sunrise in 1929 and didn't come out until late afternoon in 1941.
The Bill Murray movie caused such a resurgence of interest that two years after it came out, event organizers voiced concern about rowdy crowds drinking all night, people climbing trees and others stripping to their underwear. In 1998, a groundhog club leader wearing a $4,000 groundhog suit reported being assaulted by a half-dozen young men.
Alcohol is now prohibited at Gobbler's Knob, Phil's spot some 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
In photo: The groundhog saw his shadow, Feb. 2, 1954, as the sun peeked through an overcast sky at Washington Park Zoo in Milwaukee, Wis.
Does Phil have any competition?
The early festivities in Punxsutawney were followed in 1907 by folks in Quarryville, a farming area in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania's southeastern corner. The roughly 240 members of the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge there report the winter forecast from Octoraro Orphie, or least via his well-preserved remains.
Quarryville lodge board chair Charlie Hart said the organization has dinners and other social events throughout the year but is largely focused on Groundhog Day.
In 2024, Hart credited Orphie as a far better forecaster than Phil.
“Octoraro Orphie has never been wrong," Hart said. "This is the 116th year, and in the previous 115 he has been right on the money every year.”
In photo: Groundhog Club handler A.J. Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, during the 137th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., Feb. 2, 2023.
Whistle pigs on the menu?
The groundhog is a member of the squirrel family and related to chipmunks and prairie dogs. It's also known as a woodchuck, a whistle pig — or in the parlance of Pennsylvania Dutch, a language with German roots, a “grundsau.”
Groundhogs are herbivores that are themselves edible to humans, although they are not widely consumed. Their lifespan in the wild is typically two or three years.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission says about 36,000 hunters reported killing more than 200,000 groundhogs in 2023.
Game Commission spokesperson Travis Lau found groundhog a bit stinky to clean, with thick skin.
“It was actually really good, no doubt about it — and to my taste, more like beef than venison is,” Lau said. “The whole family ate it and liked it, and everybody had apprehensions."
Some cooks advise groundhogs are best taken when they are young and after clover is in bloom, since a clover diet is thought to improve the meat's taste.
In photo: The Zoo's groundhog crept out of his hole, Feb. 2, 1946, in Philadelphia, Pa., and saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of cold weather.
When did clubs and lodges spring up?
Starting in the 1930s, groundhog lodges opened in eastern Pennsylvania. They were social clubs with similarities to Freemasonry.
Intended to preserve Pennsylvania German culture and traditions, clubs would sometimes fine those who were caught speaking anything but their Pennsylvania Dutch language at meetings. They were traditionally all-male groups and 15 such clubs remain active.
They all share the unifying feature of a groundhog's weather prognostication, said William W. Donner, a Kutztown University anthropology professor and author of “Serious Nonsense,” a book about such lodges and other efforts to preserve German heritage.
“I think it's just one of these traditional rituals that people enjoy participating in, that maybe take them away from modern life for 15 minutes,” Donner said.
In photo: Kutztown University anthropology professor William W. Donner displays a Groundhog Lodge's birth certificate during an interview in Kutztown, Pa., Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. These lodges began as a way to preserve and celebrate Pennsylvania Dutch culture and traditions.
How often does Phil get it right?
Some well-meaning efforts have sought to determine Phil's accuracy, but what “six weeks of winter” means is debatable. Claims that a groundhog has or has not seen its shadow — and that it's able to communicate that to a human — are also fair territory for skeptics and the humor impaired.
By all accounts, Phil predicts more winter far more often than he predicts an early spring.
Groundhogs are mostly solitary creatures who start to emerge in midwinter to find a mate. The science behind whether they can make any accurate weather predictions is problematic at best.
Among the skeptics is the National Centers for Environmental Information, within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The government agency last year compared Phil's record with U.S. national temperatures over the prior decade and concluded he was right only 40% of the time.
In photo: Groundhog Club handler A.J. Dereume holds Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog, during the 137th celebration of Groundhog Day on Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pa., Feb. 2, 2023.
