Groundhog Day is a big deal in the small town of Punxsutawney.Image: www.imago-images.de
Bad news for everyone who was hoping for an early end to the cold in the USA: According to US media, the famous marmot Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on “Groundhog Day”.
02/03/2026, 07:1502/03/2026, 07:15
According to the traditional interpretation, this means: six more weeks of winter lie ahead.
As every year, thousands of onlookers gathered in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in the early morning hours of February 2nd to watch the rodent’s weather forecast. Members of the traditional “Groundhog Club” took Phil out of his tree stump at sunrise on his big day to question him and then announced the result.
Tradition of German immigrants
Groundhog Day is a tradition that has been around for more than a century and is believed to have been brought to Pennsylvania by German-speaking immigrants. Groundhog Day also gained international fame through the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray, in which a weather reporter experiences the annual event with increasing desperation.
However, whether Phil actually makes reliable predictions is controversial: Statistically, the animal is correct in significantly less than half of the cases – meteorologists therefore give the forecast little credence. The Groundhog Club explains that any discrepancy between the actual weather and Phil’s forecast is due to translation errors, not a misprediction.
Regardless, weather services expect unusually low temperatures to continue in many parts of the United States, particularly in the Northeast and on the East Coast, at least in the coming days after two severe winter storms in quick succession. (sda/dpa)