Groundhog, on TV, Says 6 More Weeks
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PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. — With the temperature hovering at 6 degrees below zero, Punxsutawney Phil gave a forecast Tuesday that is sure to send shivers down many spines: six more weeks of winter.
The groundhog was pulled from its heated burrow at sunrise, and the president of the Inner Circle, a town group in charge of the event, declared that the rodent had seen his shadow.
The cold-weather prediction was the groundhog’s 97th in 107 years of forecasting.
There were no clouds in the sky Tuesday, but the sun had not yet risen over Gobblers Knob when the prediction was made. The groundhog’s shadow came from a half-dozen television lights strung near his hollowed-out stump in central Pennsylvania.
Despite the cold, nearly 1,000 people were on the knob two hours before Phil’s emergence. Final crowd estimates ranged from 2,500 to 4,000 people.
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