Punxsutawney Phil predicts more weeks of wintry weather

Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow and predicted six more weeks of wintry weather, his top-hatted handlers have announced to a raucous, 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 AI”.

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 revellers 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.

Governor 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 scepticism.

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.

“He’ll like wink, he’ll purr, he’ll chatter, he’ll – you know – nod,” Dunkel said.

Attendance is free but it costs $US5 ($A8) to take a bus and avoid a 1.6km trek from the middle of town to the stage where the prediction was made, 123km 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.

After the forecast was made on Sunday, 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 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.”

Groundhog Day celebrations, formal and informal, were being held in many Pennsylvania towns and elsewhere on Sunday.

There have been Groundhog Day events in at least 28 US states and Canadian provinces.