This adorable desert superstar doesn't make the weather but she does predict it

SPRING'S SWEETEST PREDICTOR: While we often claim that the weather in late fall and the earliest weeks of winter is "chilly" around the Southern California desert, we could just as easily call cooler temperatures "shelly," at least if we wanted to pay homage to a particular, and particularly offbeat, weather reporter. It's Mojave Maxine we're rhapsodizing about, the Living Desert Zoo and Garden's fetching and famous desert tortoise. Nope, Maxine doesn't have pull-down maps of various cloud patterns inside her burrow, nor does she raise a claw to the wind to determine if rain is on the way. But for several years now, people around the Palm Desert animal park, and far beyond, have said that spring is on the way, at least in the region, when Maxine concludes her brumation, which is like hibernation for reptiles.

A MAXINE-CENTERED CONTEST... is now afoot — or perhaps we mean "aclaw" — and it adorably asks kids around the region to guess when the trundling titan of weather knowledge will finally emerge from her burrow, a silent but profound proclamation that the desert wintertime is wrapping up. In bygone years, the tortoise has left her cozy den in late January or early February, though she pushed into early March just over a decade ago. The quirky contest, which asks kids to name the date and time that Maxine will make her official exit, is open to K-12 students in Imperial, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. T-shirts and a Living Desert visit are the super-nifty prizes (just read all the details before entering).

FEELING "SHELLY": Even if you're not a K-12 student, you can still follow the tortoise's brumation updates on social media, especially if you count yourself as a weather maven and/or tortoise aficionado, as so many of us are. And here's another truth: Everyone loves Mojave Maxine, the Punxsutawney Phil of the California desert. So yes, we'll be feeling "shelly" this time of year, instead of "chilly," all to honor Palm Desert's powerhouse prognosticator.