(CNN) -- They barely slept. That's the case for an unusual number of black bears in western Nevada, where an abnormally warm and dry winter has spurred them to halt their hibernation and head out for food. "They may be sleeping under a deck or under a house in a crawlspace, and they will emerge when it is a garbage day and raid some garbage cans and then go back to a sleep for a while," explains Chris Healy, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Mother Nature can take credit for these bears' abbreviated slumber. Whereas parts of the Midwest and Northeast are now buried in snow and shivering in cold, that's not the case in many communities around Lake Tahoe and elsewhere.
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Black bears in the Sierra Nevadas typically "den" from December through early spring
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But some emerge from hibernation early in what's been called a "disastrous winter"
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Such bears live near places they can root through garbage; "wild bears" aren't affected yet
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Official: It's also been unusually warm in Alaska, but bears there so far have stayed put
It has also been "unusually warm" this winter in much of @placeholder.