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Illustration by Anton.

Tuesday, January 30, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

GROUNDHOG DAY: Whatever Works

Without woodchucks, Southern Nevadans turn to reptiles, birds and bats to signal spring's arrival

Friday is Groundhog Day and, once again, a woodchuck in Pennsylvania will tell winter-weary Midwesterners and Easterners whether they'll endure six more weeks of winter before spring arrives. But not in Las Vegas.

Groundhogs aren't indigenous to the desert, after all. Besides, when winter temperatures here are similar to temperatures of fall elsewhere, it's hard to get worked up about the winter/spring transition.

But even if spring in Southern Nevada doesn't announce itself via a groundhog peering out of a hole like some plastic animal in a midway whack-a-mole game, it does offer signs that it's about to arrive.

The trick is knowing what to look for.

Groundhog Day notwithstanding, most weather folklore tends to deal with winter, not spring, notes Mary-Anne Jarvela, assistant managing editor of The Old Farmer's Almanac. And, at one time or another, woolly bear caterpillars, squirrels, bears and horses all have been employed to predict the severity of an oncoming winter.

But predicting the chance of an early spring -- or, conversely, a continuing winter -- also was vital to farmers trying to decide when to plant their crops. In Germany, that early spring/late spring call was made by a badger who either did or didn't see its shadow.

"When German immigrants came to Pennsylvania in the 1800s, they brought the legend with them," Jarvela says. "And, they couldn't find any badgers, but they found groundhogs."

So, as an 1883 volume on file at The Old Farmer's Almanac's New Hampshire offices puts it: "If the ground-hog is sunning himself on the 2d he will return for four weeks to his winter quarters again."

Frank Wright of the Nevada State Museum & Historical Society isn't aware of any local weather lore similar to that of the groundhog's.

One reason may be that the arrival of spring isn't as momentous an event here as it is in snowier, more frigid climes. Take the front-page mention of Groundhog Day that Wright came across in a 1911 edition of the Las Vegas Age newspaper.

The blurb, according to Wright, "said, `We really don't care much about winters here, anyway.' So that might be part of the attitude."

But if we don't have groundhogs, we do have Mojave Max, the resident desert tortoise at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area's visitor center. For the second straight year, Max is slated to serve as Southern Nevada's surrogate groundhog.

Mojave Max is the largest tortoise in captivity at Red Rock, says Nadia Sikes, a spokeswoman who represents Clark County's desert conservation program.

Last year, about 10,000 schoolchildren tried to predict exactly when Max would leave his den and end his winter's hibernation, Sikes says.

The winning date was March 15. However, Sikes concedes she's not aware of any official Southern Nevada weather lore that uses desert tortoises as forecasters of spring.

"I think, ultimately, it's meaningful. Spring is coming because the tortoise does come out," she says.

Alex Heindl, curator of herpetology for the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says desert tortoises actually are a good predictor of spring here.

Desert tortoises are reptiles and do hibernate during the winter, Heindl says. Then, as midday temperatures hit the mid-60s, "these tortoises will kind of crawl out of their burrow and pick up a little bit of sun. And, as things start to cool off again, they'll go back down."

So the desert tortoise would serve as an eminently appropriate local stand-in for the groundhog, Heindl says. "They poke their heads, look around, and if conditions are not right, they'll go back down.

"And once they come out and start their day-to-day activity, it's a pretty good sign that spring is here and here to stay."

Otherwise, though, the signs of spring's arrival in the desert are more subtle. In fact, says Brett Riddle, an associate professor in UNLV's biological sciences department, "one of the exciting things about the desert is that every year it's a little bit different."

But the signs are there "if you know what to look for," he adds.

Take mammals, which, like other desert animals, become more active in warmer weather. For instance, on Mount Charleston, the Palmer's chipmunk will become more noticeable as spring approaches.

"That's a guy you're not going to see until at least early spring. They hunker down in wintertime," Riddle says. "Once you see them running around, that is certainly a sign that the seasons have changed."

"A large number of rodents do go into hibernation during wintertime," says Kristen Bardeen, an environmental biologist with the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. "And, as the weather warms up, they start to become more active."

And while residents of other parts of the country might rejoice at seeing the first robin of spring, Southern Nevadans might well be looking for the first bat.

"Bats in winter, for the most part, either are hibernating or have gone south," Riddle says. "There are a couple here and there, but the majority do. So when you start seeing a lot of bat activity later in the evening, you know you're well into the (winter/spring) threshold."

Bardeen says the sounds of birds will become commonplace as spring nears.

The phainopepla is one of the first birds to start setting up territories and nesting here as spring approaches, she says. "We have some resident phainopepla who live here all year around but move out of the city. They'll move to the outskirts of town.

"And hummingbirds, too. The only resident hummingbirds we have here all year are Anna's hummingbirds, and other species will start coming in the spring."

The desert tortoise's brethren also are attuned to the impending arrival of spring.

"A lot of reptiles are not active in wintertime," Riddle says. "So once you start seeing a bunch of lizards and snakes and so forth, you know you've got kind of a seasonal transition, too."

"Depending what species they are, they don't start coming out until more like the middle of March or April," Bardeen says. "And snakes aren't really active until more like April and May."

Subtle stirrings among the area's flora also presage spring.

For Southern Nevada's botanists, "the telling point really is about March 15," says Wes Niles, a botanist and associate professor of biology at UNLV. "That's when there's just about as much daylight as there is darkness, and if we're going to have spring flora of any magnitude, that is when they normally begin to flower."

While spring's arrival here is less flashy than in other parts of the country -- say, places where throngs of people breathlessly await the appearance of a furry rodent -- appreciating the subtle signs of its arrival to Southern Nevada can be gratifying.

The only obstacle, Riddle says, is "this being Las Vegas, with everybody being hermetically sealed in their cars or houses, (many Southern Nevadans) are not out enough to get a sense of the seasonal changes."