Feb 6, 2019 3 min read

This wild roller coaster of temperature swings that we’ve been on the past two weeks has everyone so confused about the weather that they don’t know if they should fire up the snow blower or throw on a T-shirt and sunglasses and wash their cars.

Temperatures the past few days have been in the 50s and close to 60 in some spots. That’s around 25 degrees warmer than average for Pittsburgh. What makes this warm start to February even stranger is how fast the mercury rose. We set a new record low last Thursday when we hit minus 5 degrees (the previous record for that date was minus 3 set back in 1971.) It was also the coldest weather we’ve experienced in a couple of years yet didn’t rival the minus 21-degree readings you might remember from January 1994.

That arctic blast came just before Punxsutawney Phil’s big day on Saturday. The furry groundhog prognosticator did NOT see his shadow this year and is predicting an early spring. Phil not seeing his shadow is pretty rare. It’s only happened 19 times including this year. The last time it happened was in 2016, and his prediction was correct as temperatures in February and March of that year wound up above average. Last year, Phil did see his furry shadow and his forecast of six more weeks of wintry weather was wrong as February and March again gave us above-average temperatures.

Phil has been forecasting the weather since 1887, and it’s a good thing he’s cute because his track record for the whole U.S. is not that swift. The climate experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) checked his accuracy and determined that Phil has only gotten it right about 40 percent of the time in the past decade.

The lead-up to Groundhog Day was very changeable weather through January. On New Year’s Day, the temperature was 19 degrees above normal in Pittsburgh. On Jan. 31, it was 26 degrees below normal. Overall for January, our temperature ended up just under one degree below normal, and we got 12.9 inches of snow (which is just over one inch above normal for January). As for snowfall this season, our running total sits at 20.6 inches, which is 3.1 inches below normal.

I have never been lucky enough to see Punxsutawney Phil’s big moment in person. Some year I’d love to make the trek to celebrate Groundhog Day there. I had to laugh looking at video of the crowd this year as they anxiously awaited Phil’s prediction. The temperature was around 6 degrees Saturday morning, and they were all bundled up in hats, gloves and scarves for the festivities. What choice did Phil have other than saying it would be an early spring? If he had predicted six more weeks of winter, he may have been pelted with snowballs. Let’s hope his mild forecast wasn’t just the result of peer pressure.

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