The summery Southern California weather may have been omitted from the forecast of the prognosticating Punxsutawney Phil's prediction Monday when he called for six more weeks of winter in his annual Groundhog Day prognosis.
The rodent was pulled out of his burrow around 7:30 a.m. local time, Pennsylvania and the president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club said that Phil saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter are ahead.
In the San Diego area, temperatures were expected to be in the 70s on Monday and hit around 80 degrees by Wednesday, but for much of the rest of the U.S., parts of which have been buried in recent snows that have left a swath of sometimes deadly devastation while delaying thousands of flights, winter has already been brutal.
In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where Phil and his handlers conduct an annual ritual known the world over, temperatures were in the single digits as a crowd danced, cheered and booed the news.
According to the Associated Press, Groundhog Day falls on the midpoint between the shortest and longest days of the year and similar predictions are made elsewhere, using not only groundhogs, but ostriches, goats and in at least one case, an armadillo.
The predictions, rooted in European agricultural tradition, are not considered to be scientific.
