The Weather Capital of the World

When you think of the weather capital of the world, what do you think of? Maybe the National Weather Service HQ in Silver Spring, MD? The Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma City? Maybe even the Met Office in England where weather forecasting itself was born?

Having already visited the NWS office in Cleveland, I went to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the city that calls itself "The Weather Capital of the World".

Although there actually was a "Groundhog Day Gale of 1976", which gives some tangential weather relation:

Image from Wikipedia.

That's not what their claim to Weather Capital of the World is based on, however. Instead, Punxsutawney is the site of the famous Groundhog Day event that goes all the way back to 1886. According to it, if Phil sees his shadow, there allegedly will be six more weeks of winter to come:

This goes back even further, and one of the forms of the legend is summed up in a short poem:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

I'm more inclined to believe the billion-dollar supercomputers that predict weather than I am a rodent, even one that has a place in weather lore. Although the flight benefits that come along with being an airline pilot mean the wife and I can go anywhere in the world we want to on vacation, the last thing I really want to do on vacation is get on yet another airline flight. So a large part the trip was just to enjoy a nice, unhurried, barely-scheduled drive through the fall foliage.

Besides, Groundhog Day is one of Shannon's favorite movies, and since it's her vacation too, I thought it would be fun for us to visit where it was set (even though it was actually filmed in Illinois) and—as Bill Murray's character put it in the movie—"to worship a rat":

That rat is Punxsutawney Phil, the guy whose shadow is supposed to foretell the end of winter. (Well, that's a picture of a picture of Phil.) However, the real guy actually is on display in the town square, and you can walk right up to his burrow and see him:

While you can't pet the real Phil, you can pet a likeness of him:

It is impossible not to come across him many times more, though, such as this groundhog in front of the McDonalds:

It wouldn't be the last one we came across, though. In fact, there are 32 different Phils scattered throughout town, each one with a different theme:

Clockwise from upper left, here are four of them:

1. Weather prognosticator Phil next to his burrow in the town square
2. Rural Phil, which celebrates the farming and Amish country that surrounds "Punxsy", as the locals call it
3. Bagpiper Phil
4. Coal miner Phil, which calls back to the area's former mining heritage

We stayed at the Barclay Bed & Breakfast, which is a quaint, pretty place right on the town square. It's run by a great lady by the name of Lisa, who makes a good breakfast and conversation, and is extremely helpful. (She even took the time to ship us the things we accidentally left there afterward.) I'd absolutely recommend staying there if you're in town, and I enjoyed her sense of humor with the menu, which my wife Shannon pretended to cook:

One of the interesting things we came across that wasn't a Phil statue was in a small park down by the creek, just a couple blocks from the town square. They have concrete chess tables, complete with concrete chairs:

While in the movie Groundhog Day, the action takes place in the town square, the actual "Does he see his shadow or not?" event takes place at Gobbler's Knob, a few minutes out of town.

Shannon politely knocked on Phil's door:

Not getting any response to her "knock knock" joke, I took the podium and then tried to wake him up:

On the way home, we stopped at Venango Regional Airport to have lunch at Primo Barone's, a decent Italian restaurant right on the field. I'd been there several times several times with students back in the instructing days, but always on cross-country flights for a touch-and-go without stopping. It would be nice to see more on-airport restaurants to make people more comfortable with visiting their local airport.

When we finally got back in Ohio, we came across this amazing view as we drove across Mosquito Lake:

That was on the way to Punderson State Park to walk along the boardwalk that extends out into the lake. We also discovered that it has an allegedly-haunted manor.

That's all for this week. Now it's back to the grind. Next week, I get in to the story of one of Wikipedia's stranger page names, the "List of Lenny Skutniks". See you next Wednesday!


Like Larry the Flying Guy on Facebook:

Follow @Lairspeed

The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

It takes hours of work to bring each Keyboard & Rudder post to you. If you've found it useful, please consider making an easy one-time or recurring donation via PayPal in any amount you choose.