Groundhog Day (wiki) dates back to 1887 when Clymer H. Freas, city editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit, began promoting Punxsutawney's groundhog as the official Groundhog Day meteorologist. Records have been kept fairly regularly since the tradition began showing the ground-dweller's predictions. However, the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC),which has much more information, has also been keeping its records quite closely, and the results might disappoint Punxsutawney fans.
According to the NCDC the data "shows no predictive skill for the groundhog during the most recent years of this analysis. Since 1993, the U.S. national temperature has been above normal 11 times in February, 12 times in March, below normal 6 times in February, 3 times in March, and near normal 3 times in February and 5 times in March." Moreover according to Stormfax, Punxsutawney Phil has been correct just 39 percent of the time since the first recorded Groundhog Day in 1887.
So obviously the shadow theory is backwards... it's not Phil that's wrong it's the interpretation of the data...
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