Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, meaning six more weeks of wintry weather

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and is predicting six more weeks of wintry weather, his top-hatted handlers announced to a record crowd gathered at Gobbler’s Knob in western 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 Pennsylvania, with far older roots in European folklore, but it took Bill Murray’s 1993 film Groundhog Day 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.

The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club says when Phil is deemed to have not seen his shadow, it ushers 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 on Sunday and Phil’s emergence.Governor Josh Shapiro, local and state elected officials and a pair of pageant winners were among the dignitaries in attendance this year.

Self-employed New York gingerbread artist Jon Lovitch has attended the event for 33 years.

“I like the cold, and this is probably the best and biggest mid-winter party in the entire world,” he said in Punxsutawney. “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.