Groundhog Day 2026: Forecast, Facts, and Folklore

Groundhog Day 2026 fell on Monday, February 2, 2026 (the holiday always lands on February 2). On that morning, townsfolk in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, gathered at Gobbler’s Knob to watch as an unsuspecting furry marmot was plucked from his burrow to predict the weather for the rest of the winter. Anyone who bought a copy of the Farmers’ Almanac already knew what was in store, since the previous August. See Punxsutawney Phil make his 2026 prediction.

UPDATE: Punxsutawney Phil Saw His Shadow 6 More Weeks Of Winter

First, What Does the Farmers’ Almanac Say?

Whether or not you follow the groundhog, or simply enjoy the folklore (don’t worry, we don’t mind), winter is not going anywhere any time soon. Generally speaking, our long-range predictions said this wet winter whirlwind would take a moment to unwind.

See the Farmers’ Almanac February and March forecasts for your region here.

No matter what the weather, spring will officially arrive with the Vernal Equinox on March 20, 2026 at 10:46 a.m. The warmer, spring-like weather may not come until a little later.

How Does the Almanac Do It?

The Farmers’ Almanac uses a mathematical and astronomical formula to make our long-range weather predictions, not folklore. We look at sunspot activity, tidal action of the Moon, positions of the planets, and many other factors to carefully craft a year’s worth of weather forecasts. Fans of the Almanac say our weather forecasts are accurate 80-85% of the time.

Even though Phil is wrong on occasion, we still respect the groundhog and a “holiday” that has stuck around for more than a century, and one in which we are reminded to put down our high-tech gadgets and consult with nature.

Shadow vs. No Shadow Folklore

People often get confused about what it means if the groundhog sees his shadow or not. Let us clear it up. According to folklore:

• If Phil does see his shadow (meaning the Sun is shining) on Groundhog Day, winter will not end early, and we will have another 6 weeks of it.
• If Phil does not see his shadow (cloudy) we will have an early spring.

The logic, traced back to the medieval Candlemas tradition, runs counter to instinct: a bright, sunny February 2 is read as a sign that winter has more cold to give. A gray, overcast February 2 is the better omen for an early spring.

What Did Punxsutawney Phil Predict for 2026?

Phil saw his shadow on February 2, 2026, predicting six more weeks of winter. The reading was delivered just after sunrise at Gobbler’s Knob to a crowd that gathers in the Pennsylvania cold every year, regardless of weather. The Inner Circle, the top-hatted handlers who tend to Phil and translate his Groundhogese, read the scroll out loud to the tens of thousands packed onto the hillside.

By Phil’s reckoning, that puts the back end of winter sometime around mid-March, lining up with the spring equinox on March 20, 2026.

What Did Punxsutawney Phil Predict for 2025?

Phil predicted six more weeks of winter in 2025.

Since Punxsutawney Phil first began prognosticating the weather back in 1887, he has predicted an early end to winter 21 times. Previous years with early spring predictions include 2024, 2020, 2019, and 2016.

Was Phil Right About 2025? A Look Back at Last Winter

Phil called for six more weeks of winter on February 2, 2025, and across much of the eastern half of the country, the season delivered. Late-season cold snaps and snow events ran well into March 2025 across the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo all logged snowstorms past mid-February. Whether you call that “winter sticking around” depends on where you stand: the Pacific Northwest and parts of the Southeast saw milder finishes, while the Plains had a sharp early-spring whiplash with severe weather.

The Farmers’ Almanac long-range forecast for the 2024-2025 winter, published in August 2024, called the season “Wet Winter Whirlwind,” with active storms tracking across much of the country. Looking back at how the season actually played out, that broad framing held up across most regions, with the wet, stormy pattern most consistent in the eastern third of the country.

Was Phil right? In the broadest sense, yes for much of the country east of the Rockies, no for parts of the West and Southeast. The honest verdict: Phil’s call lined up with what most American weather watchers actually felt.

Phil’s Recent Prediction Record

Year	Phil’s Prediction	What Happened (Eastern US, broadly)
2020	No shadow, early spring	Mild February and March in much of the East
2021	Shadow, six more weeks	February featured a historic cold outbreak across the Plains and South
2022	Shadow, six more weeks	March cold persisted across the Northeast
2023	Shadow, six more weeks	Mild finish to winter across most of the country
2024	No shadow, early spring	Warmest U.S. winter on record per NOAA
2025	Shadow, six more weeks	Cold and snow ran into March across the eastern half of the country
2026	Shadow, six more weeks	To be reviewed at the end of the season

Skim that record and the pattern is clear: Phil’s track record is mixed, sometimes uncannily on the nose, sometimes spectacularly wrong (2024 stands out, when he called early spring and the country had already lived through the warmest winter on record).

How Accurate Are the Groundhog’s Predictions?

Members of Punxsutawney Phil’s “Inner Circle” claim his predictions are 100% accurate. However, sources that keep track of his accuracy claim his success rate is more like 39%. The National Centers for Environmental Information has run its own tally and put Phil close to 50/50, no better than a coin flip on a national scale, though the picture changes when you slice the country into regions.

The History of Groundhog Day

The date of the celebration coincides with the medieval feast of Candlemas, and its pre-Christian predecessor, Imbolc, a day also rich in folklore. An old Scottish prophecy foretells that sunny weather on Candlemas means a long winter. The tradition is recounted in this poem:

As the light grows longer
The cold grows stronger
If Candlemas be fair and bright
Winter will have another flight
If Candlemas be cloud and snow
Winter will be gone and not come again
A farmer should on Candlemas day
Have half his corn and half his hay
On Candlemas day if thorns hang a drop
You can be sure of a good pea crop.

From Hedgehogs to Groundhogs

Ancient Europeans had long held that badgers and hedgehogs could foretell the weather, and came to combine this belief with the rituals surrounding Candlemas. After emigrating to Southeastern Pennsylvania, early German-American settlers substituted groundhogs, which were plentiful in their new homeland.

The First Celebration

Punxsutawney Phil is the focal point of the oldest and largest annual Groundhog Day celebration, held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to groundhog.org, 1886 marked the first time the event appeared in the Punxsutawney newspaper, but 1887 was the first time the official trek to Gobbler’s Knob took place. That makes Groundhog Day 2026 the 140th celebration.

Punxsutawney Virtual Event

Groundhog Day 2026 festivities began at 6 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, February 2. Watch Punxsutawney Phil make his prognostication via this link.

How to Celebrate Groundhog Day in America

The annual party at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney is the heart of the holiday, but Groundhog Day is celebrated in dozens of communities across the United States and Canada. Each one has its own groundhog, its own ceremony, and its own crowd of regulars.

Punxsutawney: The Main Event

• Where: Gobbler’s Knob, about a mile and a half outside the borough of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
• When: The official prognostication is at sunrise on February 2 (about 7:25 a.m. local time, with festivities starting at 3 a.m. for the early arrivers).
• What to bring: Layers, hand warmers, headlamp, waterproof boots. Temperatures are typically in the 20s, sometimes much colder.
• Crowd: 10,000 to 30,000 attendees, depending on the year and the weather.
• The lead-up: A Groundhog Day Banquet, the Top Hat Ball, the Phantastic Phil display, and several days of family events at the Punxsutawney Memorial Library and Barclay Square.

Other American Celebrations Worth Traveling For

• Staten Island, New York: Staten Island Chuck makes his prediction at the Staten Island Zoo, with one of the largest borough-level Groundhog Day events in the country.
• Sun Prairie, Wisconsin: Jimmy the Groundhog, “Wisconsin’s Official Groundhog,” draws statewide news coverage and a small-town festival atmosphere.
• Lilburn, Georgia: General Beauregard Lee at Dauset Trails Nature Center, the South’s most quoted prognosticator.
• Marion, Ohio: Buckeye Chuck, designated by the Ohio General Assembly as the state’s official groundhog in 1979.
• Raleigh, North Carolina: Sir Walter Wally at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, with family-friendly indoor programming.
• Long Island, New York: Holtsville Hal, with a free morning festival at the Holtsville Ecology Site.
• Quarryville, Pennsylvania: Octoraro Orphie, host of the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge ceremony, dating back to 1908.

Phil Is Not the Only Prognosticator! Other Groundhog Forecasters

Phil may be the most famous, but there are a number of other groundhogs that hold court at celebrations across North America (many of which also hold virtual events). They include:

Buckeye Chuck in Ohio

Dunkirk Dave in Dunkirk, New York

General Beauregard Lee in Jackson, Georgia

Holtsville Hal, Suffolk County, Long Island, N.Y. (See video below.)

Jimmy the Groundhog in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

Malverne Mel in Malverne, New York

Octoraro Orphie in Quarryville, Pennsylvania

Shubenacadie Sam in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Canada

Sir Walter Wally in Raleigh, N.C.

Staten Island Chuck in New York City

9 Facts About Groundhogs You May Not Have Known

Bring some knowledge to your Groundhog Day 2026 celebration with these fun facts:

• Groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, are a type of marmot, large rodents related to squirrels.

• They have a large habitat, extending throughout most of North America, from Alaska to as far south as Alabama.

• In the wild, groundhogs usually live two to three years but have been known to live up to six years. In captivity, they can live much longer. The original Wiarton Willie, one of Canada’s most famous prognosticators, lived to be 22 years old.

• Groundhogs are typically 16-26 inches long and weigh 4 to 9 pounds, but they can weigh much more. Punxsutawney Phil weighs 20 lbs.

• They actually have two coats of fur: a thick, wooly, grey undercoat and a longer coat of silky brownish hairs. This helps to keep them warm throughout the year.

• Groundhogs prefer to eat wild grasses, leaves, berries, and, as any gardener who has ever had one around knows, food crops. They will also occasionally eat nuts, insects, grubs, snails, and other small animals.

• The average groundhog can move approximately 700 pounds of dirt when digging its burrow. Burrows can be up to 46 feet long and up to 5 feet underground.

• They hibernate during the winter, usually between October and March or April, depending on the climate.

• If in danger, they will produce a high-pitched alarm whistle to warn the rest of its family. This is how they got the nickname “whistle pig” in some regions. Other sounds include squeals, barks, and tooth grinding.

Why Groundhog Day Stuck: The Bill Murray Effect

Groundhog Day was a regional Pennsylvania curiosity for most of the twentieth century. Then 1993 happened. Harold Ramis directed Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, the film that turned a small-town tradition into a household phrase. Phrases like “It’s Groundhog Day again” entered everyday American English. The movie was filmed largely in Woodstock, Illinois (which now hosts its own annual festival), but the screenplay tied the story to Punxsutawney itself.

The film’s effect on Punxsutawney was immediate. Crowds at Gobbler’s Knob jumped from a few thousand into the tens of thousands, and the town has leaned into the spotlight ever since. The Bill Murray effect explains why a midwinter folk holiday tied to one rodent in one Pennsylvania burrow now gets covered live by every major American news network.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Groundhog Day 2026?

Monday, February 2, 2026. Groundhog Day always falls on February 2.

Did Phil see his shadow in 2026?

Yes. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on February 2, 2026, predicting six more weeks of winter.

Was Phil right in 2025?

Phil predicted six more weeks of winter on February 2, 2025. Across the eastern United States, late-season cold and snow ran into March, lining up with that prediction. The West and parts of the Southeast had milder finishes, so the verdict varies by region.

How accurate is Punxsutawney Phil?

It depends who is counting. Phil’s “Inner Circle” claims 100% accuracy. Independent trackers put him closer to 39%. The National Centers for Environmental Information has put his nationwide accuracy near 50/50, with regional variation.

Why does shadow mean six more weeks of winter?

The folklore traces back to the medieval feast of Candlemas. A bright, sunny early-February day was believed to mean winter still had cold to give. A gray, overcast day suggested winter was running out of breath.

How old is Groundhog Day?

The first official trek to Gobbler’s Knob took place in 1887, making 2026 the 140th celebration. The custom traces back further, to medieval European Candlemas folklore brought to Pennsylvania by German settlers.

When can I see Phil for myself?

Punxsutawney holds Groundhog Day at Gobbler’s Knob every February 2. Crowds gather starting around 3 a.m. for the 7 a.m. prognostication. Festivities run several days. The town also has a year-round Phantastic Phil display and a permanent groundhog enclosure at the Punxsutawney Memorial Library.

Join the Discussion

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