Feb 7, 2018 3 min read

Are you ready for spring yet? The calendar officially says it’s still six weeks away, but given that we’ve had wild swings from days of zero degrees and subzero wind chills up to 62 degrees a few days later and another drop of 30 degrees in three hours, well… who can tell what season we’re in right now, anyway?

For sage advice, we turn to that most famous and beloved (or reviled) of furry prognosticators: Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog. I don’t know how he does it, really. That little guy gets up the gumption year after year to come out of his lair and boldly make his seasonal prediction regardless of whether the huge audience in attendance meets it with loud boos or cheers and applause. He must have nerves of steel, judging by the comments we in the weather-forecasting business get if our forecasts are a bit off-base.

I know it’s all very silly and completely unscientific, but I have to admit that I absolutely love Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil. I love watching the movie “Groundhog Day” every year when it’s on television close to then. It’s all so fun and grounded in folklore that I can’t resist it and can’t help but be amused by the joy of it. I’ve always wanted to make the trek to Gobbler’s Knob but have never done it. Living so close to the epicenter of everything groundhog, it is definitely on my to-do list.

The question I ask myself every year is how Phil arrives at his forecast. I mean, if you want to truly believe, you have to know that if Phil sees his shadow, it’s six more weeks of winter. No shadow, hello shorts and flip flops. Those guys in the top hats who drag Phil from his comfy groundhog condo so early in the morning barely wait until sunrise to let him make his predictions. Half the time, Phil must be giving that forecast before he’s even awake. That may account for his accuracy percentage, which sits at around 50 percent. Since he started prognosticating in the late 1880s, the groundhog has seen his shadow just over 100 times and has predicted an early spring fewer than 20 times.

I always think that if it’s a sunny morning, he’ll see his shadow, and vice versa with a cloudy day. Then you look at all of those lights set up by the television crews and you’d think he’d see his shadow every year simply from being thrust (and raised above some guy’s head) into the spotlight. It seems to me that the top hat-wearing handlers are pulling all of the strings. The forecast often seems to have nothing to do with the cloud cover on Feb. 2, though there were a few peeks of sunshine through the clouds Friday when Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter for 2018.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.