According to Balzac Billy, Alberta’s ‘Prairie Prognosticator”, we’ve got six more weeks of winter.
On Friday morning a crowd gathered around to see the groundhog mascot emerge from behind a hill of soil.
After a long hibernation, Billy made sure to stretch and put on some sunglasses before revealing a snow brush – which means six more weeks of winter.
This result was met with boos from the crowd, but according to local weather data, Billy is more often wrong than right.
In the last 20 years Billy has had a successful prediction just 42 per cent of the time, which almost matches this year’s results throughout North America, seeing a split between groundhogs all across the continent.
Manitoba Merv and Lucy the Lobster also predicted more winter, while Wiarton Willie and the classic Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring.
