Opening night Playbill for the Broadway show “Groundhog Day” at the August Wilson Theatre
With pineapples pummeling the West Coast and a never-ending pandemic, Punxsutawney Phil, the prodigious forecaster of Pennsylvania, failed to see his shadow early Tuesday, Groundhog Day 2024, predicting there will be an early spring, and his counterpart in New York City, Staten Island Chuck, experienced the same.
This year is Phil’s 138th year as a forecaster and it’s also the tenth anniversary since then-New York Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped Chuck while on camera. His lifeless body was found in his cage a few days later “with acute internal injuries” consistent with a fall, sources at the time reported. Perhaps it was payback for when, in 2009, he famously nibbled on then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s leather-gloved hand at the 2009 Groundhog Day event.
Across the country, other marmot meteorologists concurred, including Ohio’s Buckeye Chuck, in Marion; General Beauregard “Beau Lee” of Jackson, Georgia; and Polk County Paula, in Des Moines, Iowa.
It’s important to note that Phil, the world’s most famous groundhog, isn’t always right, however. Not surprisingly, given that he is a hibernating rodent, he is clearly a fan of winter and some 85% of his predictions called for an extended cold spell.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, “there is no predictive skill for the groundhog during the most recent years of the analysis.” In the past ten years, Phil has been right about 40% of the time, although the fact that he tries so hard to predict the change of seasons for the entire country is, in fact, both admirable and somewhat mad at the same time. Even NOAA issues different forecasts for the country’s various regions.
Groundhog Day evolved from a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition that transplanted a German holiday, Badger Day or Dachstag, to the United States. Dachstag was observed on Candlemas, February 2, and the tradition held that, if a badger emerged that day and found it to be sunny, thereby casting a shadow, it meant that winter would last for four more weeks.
The tradition further dates back to ancient Rome, when people would use hibernating animals such as hedgehogs to predict when the weather would get warmer.
Meanwhile, the owners of the copyright to the musical “Groundhog Day,” based on the West End and Broadway title and adapted from the 1993 film, took the day to announce they had released the show for licensing worldwide after adding the show to its library in 2018.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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