OpinionJanuary 31, 2025

Punxsutawney Phil's annual Groundhog Day prediction is here, drawing thousands to Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania. With only a 30% accuracy rate, will Phil foresee an early spring this year?

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil, the most well-known groundhog of all, will predict if we will have an early spring. Tradition has it that if Phil sees his shadow we will have six more weeks of winter weather. Even though one may not have anything to do with the other, maybe he will not see his shadow and spring will arrive early.

Every year a big celebration is held with a festival at Gobbler’s Knob, Penn. Thousands gather to celebrate Groundhog Day. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club was established in 1887 by a group of groundhog hunters. The club still exists today. There is a huge celebration with a ball and other activities leading up to Groundhog Day. I am sure it is good for the community’s economy. We do spend money when we are on vacation.

Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow last year. His predictions have been more wrong than right when it comes to predicting the weather. According to statistics he has only been correct about 30 percent of the time over the last decade.

The movie Groundhog Day from 1993 may have added to some of the intrigue of the Pennsylvania groundhog day celebration.

Punxsutawney Phil is not the only groundhog out there. There is a southern groundhog named General Beauegard Lee from Georgia.

Other groundhog prognosticators include Staten Island Chuck, at Staten Island Zoo; Dunkirk Dave, the second-longest predicting groundhog; Octoraro Orphie, a groundhog from Quarryville, Penn.; Buckeye Chuck from Ohio; Stonewall Jackson in New Jersey; and Woodstock Willie in Illinois.

Evidently there are a lot more weather predicting rodents out there than I would have imagined. There will be a lot of groundhog predictions going on around the country on February 2. I don’t know about everyone, but I vote for early spring. I hope at least the southern state groundhogs predict an early spring.

When I think of a groundhog’s other name, a woodchuck, it makes me remember the tongue twister we used to say as children. It went something like: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” I have not thought about that tongue twister in many years but for some reason, it just popped into my head.

I have never wanted to go to the groundhog festivities in Pennsylvania because the average temperature there this time of year is below freezing. I don’t want to travel in the winter to attend outside activities.

I don’t put stock in groundhog predictions. They have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. Even the well trained meteorologists get it wrong occasionally. We all know that February in Northeast Arkansas can go either way. We all hope we don’t get another ice storm like the one we suffered through in 2009. The ice arrived in January but we were still feeling it in February.

I don’t know how we should celebrate Groundhog Day. Most of my celebrations revolve around food. On New Year’s Day we eat black-eyed peas, on Thanksgiving we eat turkey and dressing, on Christmas we have ham, and on the Fourth of July we like barbecue. I wonder if we should pick a favorite food for Groundhog Day and make it traditional. I will have to give that a little more thought.

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