North Carolina has a passel of weather forecasters

Bless his heart, Punxsutawney Phil is a loveable guy, but he bases his annual Feb. 2 Groundhog Day winter weather forecast on conditions in his hometown in Pennsylvania. 

So, who’s to blame skeptical North Carolinians for showing enough grit to find a few alternative sources for more relevant local weather predictions? 

First, in Wake County, there’s Sir Walter Wally, a groundhog who resides in the capital city of Raleigh at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.

 

Two additional Wake County communities have their own prognosticators. The go-to groundhog in Garner is Snerd. He succeeded Mortimer, who reportedly grew too grumpy in his old age to charm the children. 

Snerd lives at CLAWS, a sanctuary and refuge in Chapel Hill in Orange County. The organization provides rescue and rehabilitation services for an assortment of wildlife species. 

In Apex, citizens get the weather forecast from Sylvia. She’s an armadillo, but it works the same way – if Sylvia sees her shadow, that means six more weeks of winter. No shadow is an omen for an early spring. Sylvia’s permanent home is at the Animal Edventure Sanctuary in Coats in Harnett County. 

In the Piedmont area, Stormy and Sunshine are two groundhogs who issue their winter weather predictions at the North Carolina Zoo’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Center near Asheboro in Randolph County. 

In the western North Carolina mountains at Chimney Rock State Park, near Lake Lure in Rutherford County, a groundhog named Pumpkin is the official winter weather prognosticator. He’s a “special needs” groundhog who is unable to resume a life in the wild.

 

Last but not least is Pisgah Penny, the famous white squirrel of Brevard in Transylvania County. Here, the people observe Feb. 2 as White Squirrel Day instead of Groundhog Day. Penny is the niece of legendary Pisgah Pete. She took over the weather forecasting responsibilities in 2022, when Pete retired.

 

Pisgah Penny

Pisgah Pete didn't go outdoors to make his prediciton. He waited for the spirit to move him whether to select the card for an early spring or the card for six more weeks of winter.

White squirrels in Brevard are quite plentiful, representing about one-third of the 5,000 squirrels that live in the city, along with nearly 8,000 people. 

The white squirrels are actually eastern grey squirrels with a mutation in their genes that makes their coats white. They have dark eyes and some grey streaks in their white fur. (They lack the red-eye coloration of albino creatures.) 

How the white squirrels came to settle in Brevard is quite a story. A pair of white squirrels were gifted in 1949 to Barbara Mull, who was 10 at the time, by her Uncle Harry Mull, who was visiting from Florida at Christmastime.

 

The white squirrels originally were part of a circus caravan that was involved in an accident while traveling in Florida. The squirrels got loose, but the circus moved on. Uncle Harry was one of the local men involved in the roundup. 

Barbara said her father wouldn’t allow her to keep the squirrels inside, but he built a large cage for them in their back yard. Barbara named them Snowball and Frisky. 

One day when Barbara’s grandfather was feeding the squirrels, one got loose (most likely Frisky). The one still in the cage “looked so lonely” that her grandfather released it. “I was so very concerned that my squirrels would get run over by a car or killed by some dog,” she said.

 “I never dreamed that they would survive, but over the months and years I would have people tell me they saw one of my white squirrels on Maple Street and then other places. Now, I enjoy seeing my white squirrels’ ‘great grand squirrels’ when I come home.”