Punxsutawney Phil Says Six More Weeks of Winter

The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club made their decree Thursday morning in central Pennsylvania: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, and there'll be six more weeks of winter. The announcement was met with boos from the enormous crowd gathered in Punxsutawney.

Folks in the East and elsewhere gave a collective shrug, as temperatures have been unseasonably warm. "But it's the winter we've been having, so that's like spring anyway," said Matt Lauer on TODAY after the news broke.

"The daffodils are already in bloom in NW Mississippi," wrote Jackie Barnes Garrett

I've actually attended the silly event twice, in person. The first was because my youngest daughter and her best high school friend were going to cut senior class and drive up there. Dad couldn't bare the thought of two recently licensed drivers venturing out on potentially icy roads at four a.m. So I volunteered to drive them.

Second year, another daughter was taking a semester off college to work and a college friend invited them up. Roads weren't bad that year, but Mom wanted to go along, so what else could Dad do?

Anyway, it is quite a circus. The town does a wonderful job of getting the incoming traffic parked in various satellite lots around the area. They then shuttle the crowd to the Gobbler's Knob site in time for the big event.

While waiting for the sun to rise, the local service organizations make a lot of money selling hot drinks plus a limited menu of hot food and souveniers to the crowd. They play peppy music and, in one section of the field, the local college kids (mostly Indiana University of Pennsylvania) get mildly drunk and rowdy to the amusement of the rest of the crowd which is well-behaved.

About 20 minutes or so before sunrise, the local dignataries march to the podium to open up the event. There are a few short entertaining speeches and, promply at the appointed sunrise time, one dignatary pulls the groundhog from his hole (actually a carefully prepared dark portable hutch brought to the location) while the others decide if he witnesses his shadow and makes the appropriate pronouncement.

They then invite the crowd to form lines if they want to come up and witness Punxsutawnety for themselves. Probably two-thirds of the crowd heads for the shuttle busses out of the event, but another third goes up to the podium to get their look at the groundhog.

The last shuttle bus is generally out with the last of the crowd by 8 a.m. and, depending on how far the crowd has to travel, some head straight for the highways, others to various events, restaurants and attractions around town.

It's a hell of an impressive event for a small town. They don't pull the groundhog out early. You can just about set your watch by the sunrise time for Punxsutawney on February 2.

Honestly, I don't know why you would be hearing an announcement at 4:55 a.m. Are you in the eastern time zone? Or, perhaps the news release was distributed ahead of time and your local radio station just jumped the gun?

I can tell you that most of us know what the result is going to be just by the weather forecast the night before. But that doesn't stop anyone from attending the event

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