{
  "id": "1995-march-computers-shadow-groundhog",
  "slug": "1995-march-computers-shadow-groundhog",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-march-computers-shadow-groundhog.html",
  "year": 1995,
  "month": "March",
  "monthNum": 3,
  "headline": "Computers shadow groundhog",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Jennifer LaFleur",
  "author_title": "NICAR training director",
  "affiliation": "IRE and NICAR",
  "summary": "IRE and NICAR staff analyzed 109 years of Punxsutawney Phil's Groundhog Day predictions by digitizing historical newspaper records and discovered that the groundhog sees his shadow 91% of the time, with prediction times becoming increasingly standardized in recent years.",
  "keywords": [
    "analysis",
    "groundhog",
    "data"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "spreadsheet"
  ],
  "full_text": "Even an old story can be given new life with a little computer analysis. That's just what some of the IRE and NICAR staff did Groundhog Day. In trying to come up with new training curriculum, Jennifer LaFleur, NICAR training director and Rosemary Armao, IRE executive director, thought getting the database of Punxsutawney Phil's predictions would be a unique idea.\n\nUnfortunately no one in the marmot's Pennsylvania hometown had that information, so with the assistance of their mothers, LaFleur and Armao dug up the history of this meteorological mole by researching 109 years of Feb. 3 issues of the Punxsutawney Spirit and the Puncsutawney Plaindealer. They input the information into a spreadsheet and ran some quick statistics: The groundhog sees his shadow 91 percent of the time, based on 97 years for which data were available. For nine years, no data were available and in 1943, the results from the Quarryville, Pa., groundhog were used. The average time of day Phil looks for his shadow is 8:19 a.m. By graphing the prognostication times, we also were able to see this event appears to have more planning. While times throughout the past 110 years have varied from 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., during the last 15 years, those time have leveled to between 7:20 and 7:30 a.m.\n\nThe next step is to test Phil's accuracy with a more sophisticated analysis using National Weather Service data.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-march-computers-shadow-groundhog.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-march-computers-shadow-groundhog.json"
}