It's Groundhog Day and all eyes were on Whelan, Saskatchewan's Woody Woodchuck for his annual winter weather prediction.

Woody, who lives in Richard Burton's sock drawer near Whelan Bay, did not see his shadow on Friday morning.

That means Saskatchewan residents may be in for an early spring!

Woody has also predicted the Province's football team the Saskatchewan Roughriders will be in this year's Grey Cup! "He's not saying we'll win but he is predicting the Riders will get there!" says Woody's Handler Richard Burton.

How does this compare to the long standing tradition of predicting the spring to come with a Pig Spleen?

Jeff Woodward giving the long-range forecast using a Pig Spleen. Drastic temperature swings should be more pronounced than normal as we go from frigid cold to above normal temperatures over the winter months.This year there will be a lot of wind particularly in the south-west where temperatures and wind chills will be harsh. It sounds like 6 more weeks of winter with this prediction.

Jeff learned it all from his Uncle Gus Wickstrom who passed away and Jeff decided to take up the family tradition. “He actually became quite famous in pig spleen predictions. He predicted some stuff that happened in the 90’s like snowfall in June and things like that, that made him a little bit famous.” He made guest appearances on more than one medium with the Daily Show as a claim to fame.

A story Jeff shared with me that made me laugh in hysterics, “One thing he really enjoyed doing, he did predictions for a place in Iowa, they would send him Spleen’s every year and they would come in the mail. He would get a call from the Post Office telling him you gotta come down and pick up this stuff right now. Because there is something in it that’s pretty rank.”

“And it comes from the ancient pagan times of Northern Europe, our ancestors are Swedish. And what they would do when they slaughtered a pig in the fall, they would look at the spleen. The idea was that the spleen held some information about how they prepared for winter. That prediction they use to actually predict what the winter was going to be like.”

Jeff’s grandfather saw this as more of a family joke and just an excuse to get the family together, but his uncle Gus took it one step further. Surpassing just the weather, he marketed the pig spleen as a way to grow hair back and many other uses.

“And the way that it works, is you take the spleen and you divide it into 6 parts and each part represents one month of the year. So the prediction goes from starting in January and it goes to June. You divide it into 6 pieces and you look at the fat and the different texture of the spleen. And that basically tells you what the weather is going to be like. If you get a lot of fat in one spot or there is some weird things about the fat, you can tell what the precipitation or the temperature is going to be.”

He goes onto explain that his uncle Gus didn’t keep his methods a secret. Its all explained in the Farmer’s Almanac with visual aids to take you through step by step. Based on where the pig is born its spleen can predict the weather up to 200 miles or 300 kilometres in radius.

“The accuracy is uncanny, and I’m an engineer so technically I’m not suppose to believe in this kind of stuff, but the accuracy is quite good.” When referring to long-term forecasts, “Our predictions come through more often than Environment Canada’s stuff.”