Groundhog Day 2025: Willie, Fred and Sam at odds over spring’s arrival

Shubenacadie Sam peers out from under some branches during a Groundhog Day event at the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park in Nova Scotia on Friday, Feb.2, 2024 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ted Pritchard (Ted Pritchard/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada’s famous prognosticating rodents were split over spring’s arrival on Groundhog Day.

Ontario’s Wiarton Willie reportedly did not see his shadow on Sunday morning, which is good news for people tired of wintry weather. But Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Sam and Quebec’s Fred la Marmotte saw their shadows, predicting a long winter ahead.

The tradition holds that if a groundhog doesn’t see its shadow on Groundhog Day, springlike weather will soon arrive. But if a shadow appears, winter’s icy grip won’t let go for quite some time.

Those keeping the Wiarton Willie tradition alive in Ontario’s South Bruce Peninsula carried the white-haired groundhog inside a see-through box filled with a bed of straw to a stage around 8 a.m.

Wiarton Mayor Jay Kirkland, who per local tradition is the only person who can speak “Groundhogese,” put his ear to the box and then announced Willie’s prediction of an early spring to the crowd.

“Willie didn’t see his shadow. We will have an early spring,” Mayor Kirkland said to cheering crowd

Nova Scotia’s beloved celebrity groundhog, Shubenacadie Sam, predicted a long winter ahead.

The large rodent poked her nose out from the pint-sized barn door of her enclosure at a wildlife park north of Halifax Sunday morning and stepped out into the -18 C cold

She spent a few moments sniffing the air and looking around at the crowd that gathered on the sunny and frigid morning to watch her prediction, before turning around and heading back inside her enclosure.

“Not surprisingly, it seems Sam wants to get back inside,” Andrew Boyne, the director of the wildlife division at the Department of Natural Resources, told the crowd

Boyne said Sam saw her shadow, which folklore says means six more weeks of cold, wintry weather

“More winter!” He exclaimed.

No shadow is said to foretell the early arrival of spring-like temperatures.

Living on the East Coast, Shubenacadie Sam is typically the first groundhog in North America to issue a long-term forecast.

She is followed by Quebec’s Fred la Marmotte, who made the same prediction of a longer winter, and Ontario’s Wiarton Willie.

In western Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and is predicting six more weeks of wintry weather, his top-hatted handlers announced Sunday.

A massive crowd was on hand to hear the woodchuck’s weather forecast, an annual ritual that has boomed in public interest since Bill Murray’s 1993 movie, “Groundhog Day.”

In medieval Europe, farmers believed that if hedgehogs emerged from their burrows to catch insects it was a sure sign of an early spring.

With files from The Associated Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 2, 2025.