How often does Punxsutawney Phil get the prediction right on Groundhog Day?
Over the past nearly 140 years, people have looked to Punxsutawney Phil to hear the weather prediction from “the only true weather forecasting groundhog.”
Thousands will be descending upon Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on 2 February to find out whether Spring will come early, or Winter will linger around for another six weeks. The first official trek to the sacred site to get the prediction from “the only true weather forecasting groundhog” was back in 1887. However, the tradition goes back much further and came over with immigrants from Europe.
Over the nearly 140 years of predictions recorded by the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, Phil has seen his shadow 107 times, foreboding an extended winter, didn’t see his shadow, on 20 occasions he didn’t see his shadow thus predicting an early spring and 10 years prior to 1900 that no record exists.
According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club his prophecies have been “100% of the time, of course!” However, what do the meteorological data say?
How often does Punxsutawney Phil get the prediction right on Groundhog Day?
The statistical probability of getting a coin toss right is 50 percent. But over his nearly seven score years in the weather forecasting business, Punxsutawney Phil has been subpar in his predictions according to NOAA. Over the past decade, he’s gotten just three out of ten correct. Two of those predicted an early spring and one he foretold six more weeks of winter. Last year’s was a mixed bag.
To be fair though, he’s held to a high standard as the most well-known groundhog, tasked with predicting the weather for the entire nation when he only sees his shadow, or not, in Punxsutawney in western Pennsylvania. Additionally, unlike his truly wild counterparts that helped foretell the coming or not of spring in the past, Phil lives in a climate-controlled environment where the light and temperature are consistent year-round and does not hibernate.
What was Punxsutawney Phil’s 2023 prediction?
In 2023, Phil predicted an extended winter but in the end parts of the United States saw their earliest spring on record. That said in March, the average temperature of the contiguous US in was 40.7°F, which is 0.8°F below average.
Temperatures were below average from the West Coast into the Northern Plains but above average in the South and East. However, the Northeast got slammed with a major Nor’easter in mid-March, the largest of the season.
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