Will It Be Sunny Or Cloudy On Groundhog Day In Rhode Island?

RHODE ISLAND — Pennsylvania has Punxsutawney Phil to tell us if we’ll have six more weeks of winter.

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 Rhode Island on Friday, the National Weather Service calls for partly sunny skies, though there may be more cloud cover earlier in the day. There is a slight chance of snow before 9 a.m. and a light chance of rain after 2 p.m.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac spring forecast, released Friday, suggested it will be warmer than normal from New England to Florida and westward across the Deep South into Texas, as well as north and west of the Pacific coast and in much of Alaska and eastern Hawaii. Elsewhere, temperatures will be near to below normal.

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Groundhog Day predictions aren’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 19.

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 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.

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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 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.