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Are groundhogs good at predicting the weather?
Posted: 02.02.2012 at 7:14 AM
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Groundhogs have proven themselves fairly unreliable when it comes to predicting the weather, but there's a pretty good chance you could see some bad behavior by the rodents Thursday morning.

New York City's most famous groundhog, Staten Island Chuck, predicts it will be an early spring; however, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow - predicting six more weeks of winter.

Legend has it that if the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2nd, winter will last for six more weeks.

But government forecasters have found no correlation between predictions and the length of winter weather.

Aside from the bad predictions, there have been a few ugly moments involving groundhog misbehavior on the big day. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had a firsthand experience in 2009 when Staten Island Chuck chomped on the mayor's left index finger as he tried to coax Chuck outside. 

Even Pennsylvania's legendary Punxsutawney Phil has been known to greet his handlers with an early morning nip on Groundhog's Day.

 

(Copyright ©2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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