Here's how accurate Punxsutawney Phil has actually been over the years

published 2 February 2015

Here's something we probably all could have predicted: It seems that Punxsutawney Phil, Pennsylvania's famous weather-predicting groundhog, is "right" about half the time.

The Washington Post put 30 years of Phil's forecasts to the test by calculating the average daily temperatures during the six weeks after Groundhog Day in various regions of the United States. The results "show that while Phil was technically right more times than not in some cities, the average temperatures between shadow and non-shadow years were slight at best."

The Post compared the accuracy of the groundhog's shadow foreshadowing to a person "winning" his last coin toss.