Unfortunately for frozen freshmen experiencing New Hampshire's winter wrath for the first time, groundhog Punxsutawney Phil's sighting of his shadow this weekend -- forecasting six more weeks of winter -- does appear to be consistent with long-range weather trends.
Perhaps not surprisingly, however, some meteorologists expressed skepticism about the general accuracy of the groundhog's predictions.
Mark Bacon, a forecaster for AccuWeather, noted that weather across the East Coast will be colder than usual throughout the month of February and that precipitation will be average.
"We can't forecast weather much ahead of that, though," he said.
Bacon tends to put little stock in the groundhog's predictions, he said.
"The groundhog has seen its shadow 92 times and not seen in shadow 14 times," he said. "That makes sense, since the sun does shine more often than not in the morning."
In most years, though, winter weather continues to persist at least until the spring equinox on March 21, according to Bacon. However, the equinox does fall more than six weeks after Groundhog Day.
"Thus, it makes sense that the groundhog sees its shadow more often than not, and more often that not, winters are average or colder than average," he said.
Julia Watkins, a weather anchor at WMUR, an ABC News affiliate based in Manchester, was similarly skeptical of the groundhog's predictions.
"They've been accurate 39 percent of the time," she said. "People actually say that it's safer to do exactly the opposite of what the groundhog says."
Groundhog Day has had a long history, supposedly originating with Roman soldiers who observed the actions of hedgehogs while quartered in Germany, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Website.
Pennsylvania Germans, noting a strong resemblance between hedgehogs and groundhogs, later brought the tradition with them to the United States in the 18th century.
