Sam Champion (The Rodent) Concurs with Prevailing Groundhog Day Forecasts

Quogue Library’s Sam Champion was the final weather-predicting woodchuck on Long Island to weigh in with a Groundhog Day prognostication on Feb. 2 — solidifying a unanimous consensus with his fellow furry forecasters.

Sam Champion — the groundhog, not the longtime WABC-TV meteorologist of the same name — visited the library with a handler from the Middle Island-based nonprofit STAR Foundation, who met with a whistle pig whisperer that reported Champion said he did not see his shadow. That means six more weeks of wintry weather — the same forecast as Holtsville Hal, Malverne Mel, Staten Island Chuck, and the nation’s top groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. 

The East End’s other groundhog, Allen McButterpants, the resident groundhog who made predictions for the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays, died last fall.

“There will never be another Allen,” Tammy Flanell, EAWRC’s education manager, previously told Dan’s Papers. “His neurological issues may have made him calmer than most groundhogs, but that only made him more unique. He gave so much to this community, and to us.”

The other groundhogs’ wintry forecast comes after the region was recently hit with back-to-back snowstorms and grappling with below-freezing temperatures. 

“Malverne Mel prognosticated to me that while looking for his shadow, it could surely be seen,” Malverne Mayor Tim Sullivan told the crowd who gathered in the village for the annual festivities. “So, I must now announce that there will be six more weeks of winter.”

Mel’s forecast was held early and in person as usual, but Hal’s was released in an online video again since his home, the Holtsville Ecology Center, was closed and the animals are being relocated following an investigation into their treatment. 

“I crept out of my borrow and then I did a quick dive, back into my hole I ran to seek cover, I couldn’t avoid the shadow that I saw began to hover,” Brookhaven Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro said in the video. “And so, my friends, I’m very sad to say, that cold and gray days are here to stay.”

The spring equinox arrives at 10:46 a.m. Friday, March 20.