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Groundhog Day is getting closer and closer … and so is spring. Groundhog Day is Sunday, Feb. 2, and spring is just weeks away, March 21.

Tradition says that North America will get six more weeks of winter if Phil sees his shadow, and an early spring if he does not.

On Sunday morning, thousands of early risers will either tune in or bundle up to watch Punxsutawney Phil emerge from a tree stump and predict the weather.

The groundhog — arguably the most famous member of his species and the most recognizable of all the country’s animal prognosticators — will do what he has done for the last 139 years: search for a sign of spring in front of a group of top-hat-wearing handlers and adoring fans at Gobbler’s Knob in Pennsylvania.

Tradition says that North America will get six more weeks of winter if Phil sees his shadow, and an early spring if he does not. Statistics say not so much: Phil’s accuracy rate is about 40% over the last decade.

Plus, human meteorologists have far more advanced methods for predicting the weather now than they did when Phil first got the gig in 1887.

Why, then, do we continue looking to creatures for answers on Feb. 2, year after year after year? (One could say it’s almost like the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day … or even exactly like that.)

I hope that people have a chuckle over the idea that it’s the middle of the winter and we’re hoping that a rodent will tell us what the future weather will be.

How did the U.S. end up celebrating Groundhog Day in the first place?

It dates back to ancient traditions — first pagan, then Christian — marking the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox, says Troy Harman, a history professor at Penn State University who also works as a ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park.

The Celtic tradition, which involves lighting candles at the start of February, goes as far back as the 10th century A.D.

The Christian church later expanded this idea into the festival of Candlemas, which commemorates the moment when the Virgin Mary went to the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after Jesus’ birth to be purified and present him to God as her firstborn.

On that feast day, clergy would bless and distribute all the candles needed for winter — and over time, the focus of the day became increasingly about predicting how long winter would last. As one English folk song put it: “If Candlemas be fair and bright / Come, Winter, have another flight; If Candlemas bring clouds and rain / Go Winter, and come not again.”

Germany went a step further by making animals — specifically hedgehogs — part of the proceedings. If a hedgehog saw its shadow, there would be a “second winter” or six more weeks of bad weather, according to German lore.

According to Harman, Groundhog Day was one of several traditions that German settlers in Pennsylvania brought to the U.S., along with Christmas trees and the Easter Bunny. And because hedgehogs aren’t native to the U.S., they turned to groundhogs (which were plentiful in Pennsylvania) instead. “And the first celebration that we know of was in the 1880s,” Harman says. “But the idea of watching animals and whether they see their shadow out of hibernation had been going on before that, it just hadn’t turned into a public festival until later in the 19th century.”

The “Punxsutawney Groundhog Club” was founded in 1886 by a group of groundhog hunters, one of whom was the editor of the town’s newspaper and quickly published a proclamation about its local weather-prognosticating groundhog (though Phil didn’t get his name until 1961). The first Gobbler’s Knob ceremony took place the next year, and the rest is history.

There is some scientific basis for the Candlemas lore, according to Harman. The thinking was that if there was a high-pressure system in early February, things likely weren’t changing and it would probably continue to be cold, while a low-pressure system suggests the potential for better weather ahead. Plus, if it is sunny out, marmots are theoretically big enough to cast a shadow by standing up.

But that alone doesn’t make them reliable forecasters.

Come Sunday, we’ll see what the groundhog thinks about the forecast … and then we’ll see what the weatherman has to say.

But after the cold, wet winter we have had, most of us are looking for spring and some warmer weather.