Punxsutawney Phil was taken just after dawn on Groundhog Day for the 125th annual weather forecasts before a small crowd of usual muddy show to hear the ice conditions should be handlers that he does not see his shadow challenged.
Including forecasts Wednesday, Phil has seen his shadow 98 times and saw that 16 times since 1887, Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle, which runs the event. There are no records for the remaining years, though the band never missed a forecasting problem.
Two years ago, Phil's prediction also paid tribute to the victory of the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII the night before. This year, during Sunday's game mentioned in the forecast, but no winner has been provided between the Steelers and Green Bay Packers, who will gather in Dallas to Super Bowl XLV.
"The Steelers are the Super Bowl," said Mike Johnson, vice president of the Inner Circle, said a little reading before the forecast was raised to the applause of drawing the crowd clearly partisan Gobbler's Knob, a small hill in the neighborhood about 6,100 residents about 65 miles north of Pittsburgh.
Groundhog Day celebration in a German superstition that if a hibernating animal cast a shadow on said February 2, Candlemas Christian last winter throws six weeks more entrenched. If no shadow was seen, legend said spring would come early.
In fact, Pennsylvania does not rodents prophetic much. The result is actually decided in advance by 14 members of the Inner Circle, tuxedos and cylinders donated for the event.
The celebration typically attracts 10,000 to 15,000 hearing if it falls on a weekday, the spokesman Luke Webber Groundhog Club. The area was under a winter weather warning and during heavy snow and sleet state, rain falls in temperatures of 35 degrees for less than the average crowd that Webber has failed to offer accurate estimate.
