“Faithful followers, there is no shadow of me and a beautiful spring it shall be,” a member of Phil’s Inner Circle read from the prediction scroll on the morning of Saturday, February 2nd, 2019. Groundhog Day is a celebration of what the weather ahead holds for us based on if Punxsutawney Phil views his shadow or not. If his shadow can be seen, then Phil crawls back into his hole and there will be 6 more weeks of winter; but if it’s cloudy and his shadow cannot be seen, then spring it will be. However, according to CNN, he doesn’t have the best record and only guesses right about 40% of the time. “You’re better off trying to decide what the rest of February and March will look like by flipping a coin,” said Judson Jones, a CNN meteorologist.

This tradition is celebrated at Gobbler’s Knob in Phunxsutawney, Pennsylvania by Americans and Canadians. There is such thing as the Phunxsutawney Groundhog Club, and a newspaper editor from the club in 1887 labeled Phil as “America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog.” In this club, the president is the one who listens to Phil and interprets his message. The groundhog is a prized animal in Pennsylvania; as a man at Dunkin Donuts told me, there are lots of sculptures in Phunxsutawney of a groundhog and the people cherish them.

Let’s hope we soon find out if Phil’s prediction was correct this year!