The unusually heavy rain that\u2019s fallen across San Diego County is causing eye-catching flowers to sprout at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and might be a precursor to a superbloom.<\/p>\n
The park, located 73 miles northeast of San Diego, averages less than 7 inches of rain over a one-year period. Anza Borrego has recorded 6 inches since August, partly because the summer monsoon produced a lot of precipitation. Storms have occurred on and off since then.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are looking pretty darned green,\u201d said Kirsten Dutcher, director of the desert research center that UC Irvine runs at the park. \u201cWe had a small fall bloom, which is unusual. If we continue to get winter rain, we could end up having a substantial bloom. Right now, there\u2019s a lot of chinchweed and verbena.\u201d<\/p>\n
The term superbloom refers to a phenomenon in which huge numbers of wildflowers bloom simultaneously, creating a spectacular sight across the floor of deserts and other arid territories. Dutcher says the right combination of water, sun, winds and temperatures has to occur to produce one.<\/p>\n
Anza-Borrego hasn\u2019t had a major superbloom since 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unusually heavy rain that\u2019s fallen across San Diego County is causing eye-catching flowers to sprout at Anza-Borrego…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,3053,643,181,23,100,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-126632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-east-county","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-county","16":"tag-san-diego-headlines","17":"tag-san-diego-news","18":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}