New Yorkers woke up to below-freezing temperatures this Groundhog Day, but luckily the end may be nigh if New York’s very own weather prognosticator, Staten Island Chuck, is right.
Chuck did not see his shadow Friday morning at the Staten Island Zoo in West Brighton, which means he’s predicting an early spring.
Staten Island Chuck made the same prediction last year, and the zoo said he has an 80 percent accuracy rate, SILive.com reported.
We, quite frankly, pray the little rodent is right and his fellow forecaster Punxatawney Phil is wrong. Staten Island Chuck’s Pennsylvania counterpart, who has been making his predictions since 1887, saw his shadow, which could mean we are in for another six weeks of winter.
According to SILive.com, Chuck made his prediction from a roomy glass enclosure. He stayed under the enclosure until it was time to make his forecast, when he rose up into it via a small elevator called the “Chuck-a-vator.”
This set up has been in place since 2014, when Charlotte, Chuck’s granddaughter and stand-in, fell to the ground after being dropped by Mayor Bill de Blasio when she tried to crawl up his arm.
Days after her fall, she died of “acute internal injuries,” though the zoo’s officials denied the mayor was in any way responsible for her death.
De Blasio isn’t the only New York City mayor to have a less-than-stellar Groundhog Day experience with Staten Island Chuck.
During his 12 years in office, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg attended the zoo’s Groundhog Day ceremony five times, and one of the times that he did, in 2009, he was bitten by the rodent, which he reportedly called a “little son of a bitch.”
