Punxsutawney Phil is greeted by a member of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club on Tuesday. (Associated Press)

Lovers of snow, sleet and freezing temperatures, rejoice: according to Ontario's best-known groundhog and his U.S. and Atlantic Canada counterparts, winter will stick around for six more weeks.

Wiarton Willie reportedly saw his shadow shortly after 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, just 35 minutes after Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow in Pennsylvania. In Nova Scotia, Shubenacadie Sam reportedly saw his shadow shortly after 8 a.m. AT.

Tradition holds that if a woodchuck casts a shadow on Feb. 2 — the Christian holiday of Candlemas — winter will last another six weeks. If no shadow is seen, legend says, spring will come early.

Shubenacadie Sam, Nova Scotia's furry season forecaster, spots his shadow as he emeges from his enclosure in Shubenacadie, N.S. on Monday. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

At Gobbler's Knob, about 105 kilometres northeast of Pittsburgh, Phil, also known as "the seer of seers" and "the prognosticator of prognosticators," was greeted by the loud cheers of thousands.

He was also received warmly by a dozen middle-age men in long black coats and top hats, members of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club.

"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!" declared one member, reading from a yellow scroll on Phil's behalf.

"My shadow I see beside me," it was read. "Six more weeks of winter it will be!"

Sam's emergence from his burrow in Shubenacadie Wildlife Park, about an hour's drive north of Halifax, was not without some excitement.

The brown rodent hid under some evergreen trees, then was lured out briefly, not by handfuls of green vegetation — his preferred diet —but by the encroaching hands of half a dozen handlers.

With files from The Associated Press