Punxsutawney Phil to give annual prediction about end of winter

Last year’s crowd may have been a record and organisers are bracing for a similar turnout on Sunday

Punxsutawney Phil is set to make his annual weather prediction. Picture: Barry Reeger/AP

Punxsutawney Phil’s team of top-hatted associates are set to issue his weather verdict, telling the world whether he is predicting wintry conditions for the next six weeks or the relief of an early spring.

The annual ritual goes back more than a century in western Pennsylvania, with far older roots in European folklore, but it took Bill Murray’s 1993 film Groundhog Day to transform it into what it is today, with tens of thousands of revellers at the scene and imitators scattered around the United States and beyond.