As one of the few — okay, probably the only — Western tradition that revolves around a marmot's morning ritual, Groundhog Day is a particularly bizarre North American superstition. Each year, on the morning of Feb. 2, it is said that if a groundhog comes out of its burrow and observes its shadow because the skies are clear, it will retreat out of fear, at which point winter continues for six weeks longer. If it does not observe its shadow due to overcast skies, spring will come early. The superstition comes from Pennsylvania Dutch culture, which makes sense given that the groundhog's range is largely confined to eastern U.S. states like Pennsylvania as well as Canada. (Nowadays, much of the press coverage of Groundhog Day revolves not around any old groundhog, but a specific groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, nicknamed Punxsutawney Phil, and for whom the town holds a large festival annually.)
While clear skies usually mean winter is still near, and clouds in the sky mean the opposite, there isn't anything scientific about this tradition. In fact, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that using a groundhog as a weather forecaster doesn't really work most of the time. In the last 10 years, Punxsutawney Phil been correct about 40 percent with his predictions. Phil — or rather, the succession of western Pennyslvanian groundhogs who have borne the honorific of Punxsutawney Phil over more than a century — doesn't have a good track record prior to that either, and has been consistently inconsistent since he got the gig in the late 19th century.
