FRENCH CREEK, W. Va. — While Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter Monday, another woodland prognosticator in West Virginia provided a different analysis.
French Creek Freddie did not see his shadow after coming out of his home at the West Virginia Wildlife Center in Upshur County, meaning an early spring if you believe in the predictive powers of a Marmota monax.
The festivities are held free of charge every year as a fun way to break up a long winter.
“This is our 37th year. We’ve been celebrating groundhog day here at the Wildlife Center since 1978,” Rob Silvester District Biologist with the West Virginia Wildlife Center said. “We’ve years where we’ve had a few people show up and we’ve had years where we’ve had as many as 500 or 600 people show up.”
The higher attendance numbers have coincided with weekend events. Monday’s turnout was a decent one with around 100 people eager to see the creature do its best meteorologist impression, drawing visitors from Pennsylvania and two from New Jersey who heard about the Wildlife Center’s event and wanted to see it for themselves.
“We’re actually extending our visitors out into other states and other places, which is really neat,” Silvester said. “We can basically showcase what we have in West Virginia.”
The groundhog needed a little encouragement from his admirers and the biologists to come out of his hole. Silvester explained that Freddie, like all the animals at the facility, are not entirely used to humans.
“Even though they’re in our exhibits they do still have their wild tendencies and that’s one of the things we really like about the Wildlife Center,” Silvester said. “People can actually come here and see the animals act very natural and still see them.”
As the snow fell and the cold wind blew Monday, the lack of a shadow was a welcome sight.
But just how accurate is Freddie?
“He’s been fairly accurate,” Silvester said. “When I have people ask me how accurate he is, I say he’s never wrong. You’ve got to realize that six weeks to the day is from here to the first day of spring. So, how can he be wrong?”
No officials statistics have been kept for Freddie’s accuracy, but scientists with the National Climatic Data Center tracked Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions from 1988 to last year and found he was right 12 times and wrong 15 times.
After Freddie’s prediction, Silvester said he was reunited with the other groundhogs housed at the facility, which can be visited at the Wildlife Center throughout the year.