STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.— Ok, Chuck, bring on the warm weather.
Staten Island Chuck, the borough’s most well-known rodent, is set to make his annual Groundhog Day prediction on Monday.
The Groundhog Day ceremony, which is set to take place on Monday, Feb. 2, at the Staten Island Zoo in West Brighton, will be closed to the public this year due to the weather, however it will be streamed online.
The ceremony, featuring Staten Island Chuck, will begin on Monday at 8 a.m. Fans of Chuck are invited to tune-in and watch the proceedings live on the Staten Island Zoo’s Facebook page.
The Staten Island Advance/SILive.com will also be on hand to cover the prediction. You’ll be able to catch the ceremony live from our Facebook page.
Chuck’s appearance and prediction are expected to occur at 8:30 a.m.
For the early birds among us, Chuck’s chief competition, Punxsutawney Phil, will also be making a prediction on Monday.
Festivities in the Keystone State will begin around 6 a.m., and a livestream of Phil’s prediction can be seen here.
Accuracy rate
On Groundhog Day 2025, Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter after seeing his shadow at Gobbler’s Knob. Staten Island Chuck, however, again predicted an early spring.
According to the StormFax Weather Almanac, Phil has an overall accuracy rate of 39% over 135 years. Chuck, on the other hand, has an 85% accuracy rate since he’s been monitoring weather beginning in 1981, according to data.
History of the holiday
The Groundhog Day tradition can be traced to Candlemas, an early Christian holiday where candles were blessed and distributed. According to tradition, clear skies on Candlemas meant a longer winter.
When German immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania, they found a large number of groundhogs. And they tasked the groundhog, which resembles the European hedgehog, with the job of predicting the weather.
The holiday started with the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, founded in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, in 1887. The editor of the Punxsutawney newspaper was a member of the club, and he claimed that Punxsutawney Phil was the only true weather-predicting groundhog.
Chuck has been making his prediction for more than three decades.