It began on February 2nd, 1886, with a terse paragraph in The Punxsutawney Spirit, the local newspaper of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, USA: "Today is Groundhog Day, and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen its shadow."
The reference was to the alleged behaviour of a large American rodent called the groundhog. The groundhog hibernates, and the story goes in the United States that on February 2nd each year he emerges from his burrow.
If the weather is dull, he goes about his business in his normal way, but if he sees his shadow, if the sun is shining on that day, he slinks back into his den and remains there for six more weeks, because a spell of cold, wintry weather is inevitably on the way.
The belief mirrors the European weather lore encapsulated in the rhyme:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight;
But if Candlemas brings clouds and rain
Winter is gone and won't come again.
The following year, inspired by the Punxsutawney Spirit paragraph, seven stalwart citizens formed themselves into the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, and retired to Gobbler's Knob, a hill outside the town, to drink copious draughts of beer and watch for groundhogs.
Their excursion was duly reported in the Spirit, and became an annual event, described more extravagantly each year as the paper's whimsical editor, Clymer H. Freas, warmed to his prognostic theme.
In February 1907, for example, he reported:
"Promptly at 12.22 o'clock a rift was riven in the overhanging clouds and Groundhog sallied forth, casting a shadow which shot through a shimmering sheen and sent a shaft of effervescent and effulgent rays athwart the town of Punxsutawney. Groundhog produced from his hip pocket an escutcheon which contained a correct schedule for all things meteorological of the next six weeks."
As the years went by, Punxsutawney made its own of Groundhog Day, and of the meteorological expertise of "Punxsutawney Phil" as they came to call the little animal. Phil became the Seer of Seers, the Sage of Sages and the Weather Prophet Extraordinary; Punxsutawney became the soi disant weather capital of the world, and the whole event became something of a national institution.
The authenticity of Punx sutawney Phil, even to this very day, is guarded jealously. As one president of the Groundhog Club remarked: "Since Groundhog ascended the Weather Throne at Gobbler's Knob nearly a century ago, petty, prevaricating pretenders with pediculosis have pecked peevishly at his paramount position as premier prognosticator. Pay no heed whatsoever to the petulant pretensions of those pestiferous piebald pilgrims from piggeries parading as the progeny of Punxsutawney's peerless prophet."