Groundhog Day 2025 meaning: What happens if the groundhog sees its shadow? | Prediction time, how to watch

Staten Island Chuck’s forecast has come true! Will there be six more weeks of winter or an early spring?<<

Punxsutawney Phil’s selection is in! Was he in agreement with Chuck from Staten Island?<<

New York’s Staten Island. A close-up of him is imminent.

Island Staten Chuck, the only animal fortune teller in New York City, is ready and set for Sunday’s Groundhog Day.

There are six more weeks of winter if a groundhog sees its shadow, so the legend goes. There will be an early spring if the animal doesn’t see a shadow. The event, which is observed annually on February 2, draws people of all ages who are tired of the cold.

Will Chuck from Staten Island see his shadow on Groundhog Day 2025?

How to watch

This year’s Groundhog Day event at the Zoo is being streamed live on the Zoo’s website if you are unable to attend in person.

The prediction will also be covered by SILive.com and the Staten Island Advance. The event will be streamed live on our Facebook page.

You may watch Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction here if you’re interested.Around six in the morning is when the livestream will start. Let’s face it, though: Staten Island Chuck is the one to watch if you have any sense of hometown pride.

Accuracy rate

Chuck and Phil expected an early spring in 2024, despite their disagreements in previous years. Local kids claim that Chuck was right in his prognosis, and we assume Phil was as well. By examining data from their school’s weather station, Susan E. Wagner High School students supported Chuck’s 2024 projection. Since Chuck’s February prediction, they have taken daily temperature readings and recorded them in a chart. Chuck’s prognosis of an early spring was confirmed by their findings, which showed that the great majority of days since his prediction that year had temperatures of 40 degrees or higher.

From February 2 to March 20, schoolchildren will once more monitor the local weather to see if Chuck’s prediction comes true.

Phil has a 39% overall accuracy rating over 135 years, according to the StormFax Weather Almanac.

Chuck, on the other hand, has been tracking the weather since 1981 and has an accuracy rate of 85%. On average, the Chuckster is right four times out of five.

Groundhog Day s history

Candlemas, an early Christian feast in which candles were blessed and given, is where the Groundhog Day custom originated. Those who observed Candlemas came to the conclusion that a longer winter would result from clear skies on the holiday.

Eventually, the Germans came to think that a hedgehog would cast a shadow on Candlemas Day if the sun appeared, foretelling six more weeks of severe winter weather. And this belief was introduced to the United States by the Germans.

There were a lot of groundhogs in Pennsylvania when German settlers first arrived. Additionally, they gave the groundhog—which looks a lot like the European hedgehog—the role of forecasting the weather.

The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, established in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in 1887, is credited with establishing the festival. One of the club’s members, the editor of the Punxsutawney newspaper, asserted that Punxsutawney Phil was the sole real weather-predicting groundhog.

For almost thirty years, Chuck has been making predictions; some years have been more eventful than others.