Phil Hogs Spotlight, Lifts Shadow of a Long Winter

Punxsutawney Phil, the country’s best-known four-footed forecaster, failed to see his shadow Friday, thus predicting an early spring for only the 10th time in more than a century.

The squirming, 10-pound groundhog was pulled from his man-made burrow atop Gobbler’s Knob at 7:27 a.m. The crowd of about 1,500 screamed wildly after Phil’s forecast was announced.

“He stood proud, tall and confident, surveyed the throng of loyal followers, peered skyward toward the east and then fixed his eyes groundward,” said Edwin Snyder, 64, a county judge and a member of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s exclusive Inner Circle.

“He turned to Groundhog Club President Jim Means and signaled to him in unmistakable ground-hogese: ‘There is no shadow today,’ ” Snyder said.

Tradition has it that, if a groundhog sees his shadow at sunrise on Feb. 2, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he does not, spring is just around the corner.

Phil has predicted an early spring just nine other times since 1887, when German-born farmers initiated the yearly event in this small western Pennsylvania town. The favorable forecasts were in 1890, 1902, 1934, 1950, 1970, 1975, 1983, 1986 and 1988.

As soon as his forecast was announced, Phil was whisked away from the burrow and returned to his rest-of-the-year home at the local library, a heated and air-conditioned hutch that he shares with two other groundhogs.