GA Groundhog Beau's Spring Prediction At Odds With Punxsutawney Phil's Longer Winter Guess

ATLANTA, GA — Pennsylvania has Punxsutawney Phil to tell us if we’ll have six more weeks of winter.

Wednesday morning, Feb. 2, Phil said, "yes."

But here in Georgia, we celebrate Groundhog Day with Gen. Beauregard Lee.

Beau emerged Wednesday morning to a cloudy sky but didn't see his shadow.

So does that mean we can expect Spring to come sooner in the Peach State?

If you're to believe a marmot whose name sounds oddly like the mashup of Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee, then, yes.

You know the drill on this tradition: if the animal meteorologist sees its shadow, brace yourself for another six weeks of winter. If not, spring is just around the corner.

In the Atlanta region, AccuWeather says it looks as if it will be cloudy Wednesday after the weather prognosticating groundhog makes the big reveal about spring.

Georgia’s Groundhog day begins at the Dauset Trails Nature Center in Jackson, about 55 miles south of Atlanta. Climate forecasters, weather wage makers and Gen. Lee stans make their way into the center at 6 a.m. to wait 90 minutes for Beau to show with all the fanfare of a ‘Dawgs home opener, souvenir t-shirts included.

This isn’t scientific, of course, just some pre-spring silliness to get your mind off blizzards, polar vortexes and such until spring officially arrives with the vernal equinox on March 20. AccuWeather meteorologists put more science into figuring out when meteorological spring will arrive.

“I think this year, he is not going to see his shadow, and spring will be around the corner,” AccuWeather lead U.S. long-range forecaster Paul Pastelok said in the private weather company’s pre-Groundhog Day 2022 spring weather forecast.

But don’t put away the snow gear and shovels, especially in the northern tier of U.S. states, which could see significant weather events over the next several weeks, Pastelok said in AccuWeather’s spring outlook.

In Georgia, AccuWeather predicts it will start to feel like spring either this month or sometime in March.

"I think this year, he is not going to see his shadow, and that spring will be around the corner," Pastelok said. "However, it doesn't mean that we're not going to see any significant winter weather coming our way, at least in the northern tier of the U.S., for the next several weeks.”

Enterprising Punxsutawney residents organized the first Groundhog Day celebration in 1887 around a tradition that early 19th century settlers brought to Pennsylvania from Germany.

Clymer Freas, the editor of the The Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper, came up with the idea in 1886 and convinced the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, a group of businessmen and groundhog hunters, that it was a solid one. They traded groundhogs for hedgehogs, the marmot used in the German celebration, but the idea behind the observance remains unchanged: If the varmint sees its shadow, more winter is in sight; if not, spring is near.

The earliest of Feb. 2 celebrations had nothing to do with groundhogs or hedgehogs. Today’s lighthearted festivals around marmots borrow heavily from the ancient European Christian celebration known as Candlemas Day, “commemorating the occasion when the Virgin Mary, in obedience to Jewish law, went to the Temple in Jerusalem both to be purified 40 days after the birth of her son, Jesus, and to present him to God as her firstborn (Luke 2:22–38),” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

According to tradition, religious leaders blessed candles used during the winter and passed them out on Feb. 2, the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. If the candles were distributed under clear, sunny skies, the remainder of winter would be a rough ride. But if the day was gray and cloudy, spring was on the way.

Punxsutawney Phil was introduced at the inaugural U.S. Groundhog Day in 1887, and a groundhog has looked for its shadow every year under that name, sealing the “holiday” in our America’s cultural heritage. A groundhog was pulled from the ground that first year and saw its shadow on Gobbler’s Knob. The prediction was right for a few regions of Pennsylvania, but not the entire state.

The groundhog has gotten it wrong six out of the last 10 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.