When the Groundhog Doesn't Like the Sky's Look

So that poor Groundhog (version 12.0?) saw another stretch of winter. And this on the day that we had rain and melting ice here. Gray gray gray and no vision of the Sun at all. Guess we have to agree with him, no shadows possible here.

Of course, according to WikiP, there have been only "early spring" predictions only 13% of the past 122 predictions. Given the weather and cloudiness, this may not be a big surprise. Could be cloudy and wrong just as likely as cloudy and right. How good are his predictions?

According to this article at CNN from 1998 (they had the Internet in 1998!?!), the National Climate Data Center has Phil's accuracy rate at about 59%. Could be a little higher or lower, but that is darn close to 50/50 in my book.

How about for us? Including last year, which was a decidedly late spring (our snows began in March and several feet later, we slumped into April), Phil is 50/50 for 6 years (2002-2007).

I guess I need some of that immortality-inducing "Groundhog Punch" to make it through the winter, tho.

Observatory Conditions - Overcast, 40 F, no precip