Punxsutawney Phil's team of top-hatted associates will issue the woodchuck's weather verdict as the sun rises on Sunday, telling the world whether he is predicting wintry conditions for the next six weeks or the relief of an early spring.
The annual ritual goes back more than a century in western Pennsylvania, with far older roots in European folklore, but it took Bill Murray's 1993 movie to transform it into what it is today, with tens of thousands of revelers at the scene and imitators scattered around the United States and beyond.
Last year's crowd may have been a record and organizers are bracing for a similar turnout on Sunday.
If the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club members declare Phil did not see his shadow, that is said to usher in an early spring. If he does see it, it's six more weeks of winter, although what that means can be subjective.
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.
Tom Dunkel, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, says there are two types of people who make the trek to Gobbler's Knob: the faithful seeking to validate their beliefs and the doubters who want to confirm their skepticism.
Phil communicates his forecast through “Groundhog-ese” with the help of a special cane that Dunkel has inherited as the club's leader. It's not as if he speaks in English words.
“He’ll like wink, he’ll purr, he’ll chatter, he’ll — you know — nod,” Dunkel said.
Attendance is free but it costs $5 to take a bus and avoid a 1 mile (1.6 kilometer) trek from the middle of town to the stage where the prediction is made, some 80 miles (123 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh. The need for so many buses is why the local schools, where the sports mascot is the Chucks, close when Groundhog Day falls on a weekday.
A new welcome center opened four years ago and the club is working on an elaborate second living space for Phil and family so they can split time between Gobbler's Knob and Phil's longtime home at the town library. The club also is putting up large video screens and more powerful speakers this year to help attendees in the back of the crowd follow the proceedings.
"It’s a holiday where you don’t really owe anyone anything,” said A.J. Dereume, who among the club's 15-member inner circle serves as Phil's handler. “You’re grasping onto the belief, you know, in something that’s just fun to believe in.”
Phil has a wife, Punxsutawney Phyllis, and two pups born this spring, Shadow and Sunny, although his family won't join him on stage for the big event. The groundhog family eats fruits and vegetables, get daily visits from Dereume and see a veterinarian at least once a year.
The club's lore is that Phil is the same woodchuck who has been issuing weather forecasts for the past century, thanks to an “elixir of life” that keeps him immortal.
“There's only one Phil, and it's not something that can be handed down,” Dunkel said. “Just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, there's only one.”
Groundhog Day celebrations, formal and informal, are being held in many Pennsylvania towns and elsewhere on Sunday. There have been Groundhog Day events in at least 28 U.S. states and Canadian provinces.
Mark Scolforo, The Associated Press
