How accurate is the official groundhog Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day?

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Karen Hill

Over the last sixty years, the average accuracy rate for groundhogs on Groundhog Day has only been about 28 percent.

Punxsutawney Phil’s got a slightly more impressive record—he predicts correctly about 39 percent of the time.

Maybe they’re using the wrong animal for the job. The original “groundhog” wasn’t a groundhog at all, but a badger.

The tradition is a German one, and when German immigrants came to America, they couldn’t find a stinkin’ badger in all of Pennsylvania (at least not any that looked like their Old World variety), so they had to settle for the much more common groundhog.

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