A dawn ceremony Monday will see celebrity groundhog Punxsutawney Phil emerge from hiding and deliver his annual long-term weather forecast.
The choice is clear as always: if the fearless four-legged sage emerges from his burrow and sees his shadow Winter will continue for six weeks. However, if he doesn’t, an early Spring is on its way.
AP reports tens of thousands of revelers will be descending on Gobbler’s Knob in rural Pennsylvania to witness this year’s prognostication, which will be made after groundhog Phil gets brought to the stage from his hatch on a tree stump.
Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in a scene from the film ‘Groundhog Day’, directed by Harold Ramis, 1993. (Columbia Pictures/Getty Images)
The ceremony is run by the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, which takes care of Phil between his momentous public appearances which have turned into a huge tourism draw for Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a town in Jefferson County about a 90-minute drive northeast of Pittsburgh.
The national popularity of Groundhog Day was supercharged by the 1993 Bill Murray film of the same name. Mostly it’s a few hours of harmless, early morning fun — although alcohol is no longer allowed at the site after a series of unfortunate incidents, the AP report notes.
File/A crowd of over 40,000 waits for the weather report before Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow predicting 6 more weeks of winter during the 139th annual Groundhog Day festivities on Friday February 2, 2025 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
“We just like to remind people that there’s a lot of serious things in this world and this life, and Groundhog Day is not one of them,” said home appraiser Dan McGinley, a member of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle for about a decade.
“We take not taking ourselves too seriously, seriously. But seriously, this is not a serious thing.”
Punxsutawney club members say there are two types of people who show up at Phil’s spot some 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh — those seeking to validate their beliefs and doubters who want to confirm their own skepticism.
Groundhog Day falls on Feb. 2, the midpoint between the shortest, darkest day of the year on the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s a time of year that also figures in the Celtic calendar and the Christian holiday of Candlemas.
The annual event owes its origin in a German legend that says if a furry rodent casts a shadow on Feb. 2, winter continues. If not, spring comes early.
