By TASSANEE VEJPONGSA and MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press
PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (AP) — 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.
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.
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.”
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 (1.6 kilometer) trek from the middle of town to the stage where the prediction was made, some 80 miles (123 kilometers) 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.”
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 (81 kilometers) 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.
___
Vejpongsa reported from Punxsutawney. Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
