Georgia Groundhog Made Correct Prediction, Has Not Been Sued

March 26th, 2013

Georgia’s official weather prognosticator General Beauregard Lee comes out of his home at the Yellow River Game Ranch Friday morning, Feb. 2, 2007, in Lilburn, Ga. The groundhog emerged from his antebellum mansion before a crowd of 100 people and saw no shadow, predicting early spring. (AP Photo/Gwinnett Daily Post, Anthony Stalcup) ** ATLANTA OUT … Continued

silive.com

Ohio court officials have filed a lawsuit against weather-predicting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil for wrongly forecasting an early spring.

If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Georgia’s celebrity groundhog is not being sued because he correctly predicted six more weeks of winter.

But, he too has been wrong before.

General Beauregard Lee has a higher prediction accuracy rate than Punxsutawney Phil.

This year is no exception.

Codi Reeves is manager of the Yellow River Game Ranch, where General Lee lives.

“We had a lot of disappointed people this year when he said it was going to be more bad weather, because he’s typically predicted an early spring so a lot of folks weren’t too happy,” Reeves says. “But it looks like he knew what was coming.”

But, even the most clairvoyant of groundhogs can make mistakes.

The most notable mistake for General Lee was when he predicted an early spring in the year of the so-called Great Blizzard of 1993.

To the best of our knowledge, General Lee was not sued over the ’93 prediction.

Even with his honorary doctorate of “Weather Prognostication” from the University of Georgia, General Lee is still not considered a scientific weather predictor.